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NORMAL STUDIES FOR SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS. 



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THE BIBLE: 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 



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BY 



ALFRED HOLBORN, M.A. Lond. 



PREPARED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF 
THE INTERNATIONAL NORMAL COMMITTEE. 






BOSTON: 

Cangrtptional SunSag=Sci)ooI anU $ublisfjms Sarietg, 



CONGREGATIONAL HOUSE. 



AnEKIOAlf EDITION, COPYRIGHTED, 1885. 



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PUBLISHERS' NOTE. 



The plates of the Normal Studies for Sunday-School Teach- 
ers have been purchased by the Congregational Sunday-School 
and Publishing Society, from the London Sunday-School Union, 
together with the right to publish the books, so far as that right 
can be transferred. The officers of the London Sunday-School 
Union, in their communication transferring the plates to the 
Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society, declare 
that, "so far as this Union is concerned, we shall not supply 
any plates of the works to any other House in America ; and, 
so far as we can, we shall recognize your Society as being 
publishers of the works referred to." 

Various revisions and additions have been made to the text ; 
and a copyright has been obtained to this edition. 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTORY LETTER ADDRESSED TO SUNDAY SCHOOL 
TEACHERS. 

Origin and purpose of this book— Plan excludes the question of 
inspiration — Considerations pointing to a Divine origin of 
the Bible : (1) Its survival of all attempts to destroy it— 
and (2) all attempts to destroy belief in it— (3) Its vast 
circulation — (4) Its influence on modern literature — (5) Its 
influence on human life and character. The Bible a unity— 
A progressive revelation — How this Text-book should be 
studied ... ... ... ... ... ... 



CHAPTER I. 

ON THE EVIDENCES OP THE AUTHENTICITY AND GENUINENESS 
OP THE SACRED WRITINGS. 

The evidence for the Old Testament based on that for the New. 

I. New Testament. — Pauline Epistles selected for a starting- 
point — (1) Internal evidence for these Epistles — General 
characteristics — Undesigned coincidences — Romans, Corin- 
thians, and Galatians examined— (2) External testimony to 
the Pauline Epistles — (3) The Gospels and oiher books of 
the New Testament — Their contents corroborated by the 
Epistles — Internal evidence — Testimony of Papias, Justin, 
Irenseus, etc. — Comparison with Apocryphal Gospels. 

II. Old Testament. — Contents verified by profane history, 
etc. — Frequent quotation of the Old Testament by Christ — 
and by the evangelists and apostles — Interdependence of the 
Old Testament and the New ... 



IV CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER II. 

ON THE FORMATION OF THE CANON: CHARACTERISTICS OF 
THE SEVERAL BOOKS. 

PAGR 

Meaning of the word " canon." I. Canon of the Old Testament 
—Formed gradually— " The Law"— "The Prophets"— 
" The Writings "—Synod of Jamnia — The Canon of Josephus. 
II. Canon of the New Testament — Formed gradually — 
Earlier portion— Later additions — Persecution of Diocletian 
— Council of Carthage — Authority of Scripture not due to 
councils — Table from Dr. Charteris's " Canonicity." Sum- 
mary of the contents and characteristics of the principal 
canonical books ... ... ... ... .. 25 



CHAPTER III. 

ON THE LANGUAGE AND STYLE OF SCRIPTURE : THE BIBLB 
A UNIQUE BOOK. 

Language and style of Scripture vary in the different books — 
Nevertheless some common characteristics : 1. Dignity — 
2. Reference throughout to God and righteousness — 2. Sup- 
pression of the personality of the writers — 4. Impartiality 
and candour — 5. Dramatic style — 6. Simplicity and sobriety 
— 7. Figurative speech — 8. Parallelism — 9. The Bible a 
unique book — Testimonies of Dr. Huxley, Sir Walter Scott, 
and Sir William Jones ... ... ... ... 50 



CHAPTER IV. 

ON THE STUDY OF SCRIPTURE WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO 
SUNDAY SCHOOL INSTRUCTION. 

The teacher must know more than he teaches — 1. The Bible to 
be studied as a book of human life — 2. The progress of 
Divine revelation — In morality — Modes of worship — The 
idea of God — The doctrine of the future life — 3. The Bible 
must be studied historically — Epitome of Bible history — 4. 
Other studies necessary — 5. Plan for the reading of Scripture 
— 6. Preparation of the lesson — 7. Scripture difficulties : 
(i.) Miracles— (ii.) Apparent contradiction in statements of 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



fact— (iii.) Apparent contradiction in doctrine — (iv.) The 
bad actions of good men — (v.) Evil things apparently done 
with Divine approval— (vi.) The imprecatory Psalms — 
(vii.) Anthropomorphism and Anthropopathism — (viii.) Pas- 
sages which offend our delicacy of taste ••• ... 66 



CHAPTER V. 

ON THE MEANS OF RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE, 
UNDER THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS, WITH EXAMPLES. 

The information scanty and scattered — 1. Parental instruction — 
2. Instruction by rites and symbols — 3. Public reading of 
the Scriptures — 4. Instruction by teachers divinely commis- 
sioned — The prophets — 5. The schools of the prophets — 
6. The service of song — 7. The synagogue — 8. Schools — 
9. The Christian Church ... ... ... „, 95 



CHAPTER VI. 

ON THE TEACHING PROCESS, AS EXEMPLIFIED IN THE BIBLE ! IN 
QUESTIONING, METAPHOR AND SIMILE, OBJECT ILLUSTRATION, 
PARABLE, AND PRACTICAL APPLICATION. 

1. Questioning — Different forms answering different purposes — 
Christ's use of the art of questioning— 2. Metaphor and 
simile — Defined and illustrated — Metaphors and similes of 
Scripture mostly drawn from natural objects — Examples from 
the writings of Paul and other apostles — 3. Object illustra- 
tion — In the Old Testament — In the Gospels — In the 
Epistles — 4. The parable— Defined and distinguished from 
the fable — Parable of Nathan — Later prophets — Parables of 
our Lord— 5. Practical application — Need for this in teach- 
ing children — Instances in the Old Testament — In the 
discourses of Christ — In the Acts o c \e Apostles — In the 
Epistles ... ... .. ... ... ... 114 

Appendix ... ... ... ... ... ... 133 

Index ... ... ... ••« ».« e «* ••• x^o 



The other volumes of Normal Studies novj ready are as 
follows : — 

THE YOUNG TEACHER: An Elementary Handbook of 
Sunday-school Instruction. By Wm. H. Groser, B.Sc, 
with an Introduction by J. II. Vincent, D.D. Price 
75 cts. 

Contents. — I. The Sunday School, its Scope and Aims. — II. 
The Chief Qualifications of the Sunday-school Teacher. — III. Prin- 
ciples of Instruction, and their Relation to Bible Teaching. — IV. 
Methods of Instruction : their Use in Bible Teaching. — V. Bible Les- 
sons, and How to Prepare Them. — VI. Class Teaching. — VII. Class 
Management. — VIII. Helps and Hinderances. 

PRIMER OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE. By R. A. Red- 
ford, M.A., LL.B. Price 75 cts. 

Contents. — I. What Christianity is. — II. What the Credentials 
of Christianity are. — III. What Christianity is to the World. —IV. 
How Christian Evidences should be Studied. — V. How to Teach the 
Old Testament. 

Address all orders to the Congregational Sunday 
School and Publishing Society, corner Beacon and 
Somerset Streets, Boston. 



Note to tije American lEUtttou. 



No teachers have so strong reasons for desiring the highest 
skill as those who teach the Word of God. That their great 
aim is to induce their pupils to surrender their wills to the will 
of God, and to develop into moral and spiritual perfection 
those into whom the Holy Spirit has come to abide, only makes 
it more necessary that they should understand the principles 
and methods of instruction. 

The last twenty-five years have witnessed great advances in 
knowledge of the art of teaching. Schools for training teach- 
ers are now provided at public expense in nearly all the States 
of the Union. New text-books are constantly being written 
on the subject; and new methods of applying the principles 
of instruction, and of developing the mental powers, are con- 
stantly being tested and described. The average Sunday- 
school teacher has not time for thorough and extended training 
in the art of teaching. He is busy in other callings. His work 
in the Sunday-school is voluntary ; and his continuance in it is 
not secured by ordinary business obligations, but by the higher 
motive of service to his fellow-men for Christ's sake. The 
strength of these motives is determined by the activity of his 
spiritual life and his faith in God ; and these are constantly in 
danger of being weakened from many causes. To set the 
standard of his qualifications too high is to discourage him 
altogether, and banish him from the school. The question, 
how much of this training should be insisted on as essential to 
his fitness for his work, is a most important one. 

vii 



V1U NOTE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 

In the presence of some opposition and much more indiffer- 
ence, increasing efforts have been made, for several years, 
to furnish some sort of special training to Sunday-school 
teachers. In this movement Dr. J. II. Vincent has been from 
the first the acknowledged leader. Through his guidance, and 
for this purpose, the Chautauqua Sunday-School Assembly was 
organized ten years ago. A number of books have been written 
on the subject, of which many of the best have been either by 
his pen or under his direction. Summer Assemblies have 
multiplied, and have expanded beyond their original aim. 
Sunday-school teachers from all parts of the country have been 
made acquainted with each other, and have awakened in each 
other holier fervor and more exalted ideas of their mission by 
mutual intercourse. 

Still, it is plain enough that the churches have not yet taken 
up the idea that this teacher-training is their business. Special 
efforts in the churches in this direction are the exce23tion. Only 
a small proportion of them have any meetings for the purpose 
of studying how to teach. Theological seminaries have, as 
yet, no place in their curriculum for instructing students in the 
art of teaching teachers. The subject rarely finds a place in the 
programmes of church conferences or associations ; and when 
it does, there are few who can so treat it as to kindle interest 
and furnish valuable information. 

Yet the churches are sensitive to the necessity of special 
training for their pastors. They are slow to trust a company 
of a hundred or more to the care of one unprepared for his 
work. It is only natural to look in the near future for a similar 
demand for those to whose pastoral guidance companies of five 
and ten are entrusted. The leadership that was once confined 
to a few professional men has extended itself to a great multi- 
tude of laymen and women ; and, surrounded as they are by 
the growing spirit of inquiry in regard to secular teaching, 
they will seek for at least a knowledge of the elementary 
principles of the art of teaching, as applied to the Sunday- 
school. 

The issue of this series of text-books is one important step 
in this direction. The demand for them, expressed four years 



NOTE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. IX 

ago in the action of the Centenary Meeting in London, is much 
greater now than it was then. They will themselves create a 
greater interest, and lead to the preparation of other books in 
the same line. When the task of revising them was first com- 
mitted to me, I intended making extensive changes. But a 
more thorough examination convinced me that this would be 
unjust to their authors, and I have contented myself with only 
such alterations as seemed necessary to adapt the books to 
American readers. I have added to the Primer of Christian 
Evidence a part of the excellent little treatise of Principal 
Benham on "How to Teach the Old Testament," because of 
its suggestive hints in the line of the course of lessons I have 
prepared for the second year of a course of normal study. 

This course is another important step in the training of 
Sunday-school teachers. Taking these books as a basis, a series 
of lessons has been prepared, which, with the readings con- 
nected with them, may profitably occupy such time as the 
average teacher may be likely to be able to appropriate to such 
study for two years. Individuals in correspondence with the 
managers, and by the use of leaflets which will be furnished, 
may pursue the course alone. Classes of teachers under the 
guidance of pastors may undertake it with still greater 
advantage.* 

Nearly all the larger Summer Assemblies have already 
adopted this course; and if those who study it through the 
year will come up to the Assemblies to meet competent teachers 
with such questions as they may wish to ask, listen to the lec- 
tures, and take part in the daily drill and examinations, they 
will so fit themselves for their work that they may reasonably 
expect a higher degree of success. 

More than that, the meeting and intercourse of teachers of 
different religious denominations and from different sections of 
the country, in a fraternity organized on the basis of this com- 
mon aim and study, will greatly promote the interests of the 
Sunday-school. I welcome with great joy this Christian fel- 

* Any desiring further information concerning this Assembly Normal 
Union may address either myself or Rev. J. L. Hurlburt, D.D., 705 Broadway, 
New York. 



X NOTE TO THE AMEKICAN EDITION. 

lowship and the noble results it promises, and would gladly 
pray for the special gifts of the Holy Spirit for teaching His 
truth to each one who enters into it. 

May these books help many fellow-workers to greater suc- 
cess in winning souls, and in informing them concerning the 
thoughts and will of God, and transforming them into the 
image of His dear Son. 

A. E. Dunning. 

Congregational House, Boston. 



INTRODUCTORY LETTEE. 

Addressed to Sunday school Teachers, and especially* 
to the Young Teachers for whom this book is more 
particularly designed. 

My dear Friends, 

This little work lias been written at the request 
of the Committee of the Sunday School Union, in further- 
ance of a scheme drawn up by the International Normal 
Committee, which embraced representatives of the Sunday 
school work in America as well as Great Britain. Their 
desire was to afford you some guidance in the pursuance 
of a course of reading and study, which would enable you 
to discharge more efficiently the important duties you have 
undertaken. The scheme falls into three parts, of which 
the second relates to "the Bible as the Sunday school 
Text-book. " You will, of course, understand that by 
M text-book " is meant not a book of texts, but a manual of 
instruction — a book to be used in class as the " text " upon 
which your teaching is to be the "commentary." Your 
aim goes beyond the mere teaching the contents of the 
Bible, however intelligently this may be done. Your aim 
is to " teach Christ " — to bring your scholars into personal 
and saving relations with the Redeemer of mankind, and 
to mould them in His likeness. But for this purpose the 

xi 



Xll INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 

Bible is indispensable as a text-book. It contains all we 
know of Jesus Christ, and of the way in which God 
prepared mankind for His coming. It is, therefore, your 
hand-book, which you will use as every good teacher uses 
the hand-book or class-book on any subject which he has 
fco teach ; first mastering its contents yourself, and gather- 
ing from all quarters information which will enable you 
to employ them most effectually for the main end you have 
in view. 

The International Committee laid down the divisions of 
the subject, and though, in some respects, I should have 
preferred a different plan, I have thought it best, on the 
whole, to adhere to theirs in the headings of the following 
chapters, with only very slight modification. The first 
chapter will show you by what evidence the genuineness 
and authenticity of the several books is established ; the 
second describes the gradual process of their collection into 
one volume, the Canon of Holy Scripture, and briefly 
indicates the contents and characteristics of its several 
parts ; the third calls attention to some features in the 
language and style of Scripture which make this volume 
a unique book The International Committee have deemed 
it wise not to enter on the question of Inspiration, but I 
should like at the outset to lay before you some considera- 
tions which may strengthen your own faith in the Divine 
origin of the Bible, and provide you with a reply to such 
persons as would class this volume among the ordinary 
productions of the human intellect. Ti*ese considera- 
tions do not require us to assume or discuss any particular 
theory of inspiration, but only to ponder certain undeniable 
facts connected with the history of the Book. 

1. First of all, I would call your attention to the 



INTRODUCTORY LETTER. Xlll 

remarkable way in which this Book has outlived all 
attempts to destroy it. When Antiochus Epiphanes con- 
quered Palestine, 168 B.C., he determined to extirpate the 
Jewish religion, and commanded all copies of the Law to 
be burned, and every one found in possession of a copy 
to be put to death. In the year 303 of our era, the 
Emperor Diocletian issued a similar edict throughout the 
whole Roman Empire, with regard to the New Testament 
scriptures, which was carried into effect with, the utmost 
rigour. The Roman Catholic Church, as you are well 
aware, made the most vigorous efforts, at the time of the 
Reformation, not, indeed, to destroy the sacred originals, 
but to destroy all copies of them in the language of the 
people ; and in addition to these might be enumerated 
other attempts, more partial in their extent, to banish the 
volume of Holy Writ from the realm of literature. But, 
in spite of all these strenuous endeavours to destroy it, the 
Bible has survived, and not only survived, but multiplied 
to an extent utterly unparalleled in the case of any other 
book whatever. 

2. Consider, again, the attempts made to destroy "belief 
in the Bible — the vast number of books written to oppose 
its teaching, to invalidate its historical testimony, or to 
refute its claims to Divine authority. If we were to begin 
with the writings of its early opponents, Celsus and 
Porphyry, and gather together all such works as have 
appeared in succeeding centuries down to the present 
date, we should have enough to fill the shelves of a well- 
fitted library. " If all these books," says Professor Rogers, 
" were placed in one library, and this single volume set on 
a table in the midst of it, and a stranger were told that this 
book had drawn upon itself for its exposure, confutation, 



XIV INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 

and destruction this multitude of volumes, I imagine he 
would be inclined to say, ' Then, I presume this little Book 
was annihilated long ago ; though how it could be needful 
to write a thousandth part so much for any such purpose, 
I cannot comprehend.' How surprised would he then be 
to learn that they were felt to be not enough ; that similar 
works were being multiplied every day, and still to no 
purpose in disabusing mankind of this frenzy. He would 
learn, indeed, that so far from accomplishing their object, 
the new volumes are little more than necessary to replace 
those of this fruitful and yet fruitless literature which are 
continually sinking into oblivion." 

3. And whilst this is the fate of the volumes written to 
" put down" the Bible, what is the fate of the Book itself ? 
The demand for it goes on increasing from year to year. 
In 1881 the Revised Version of the New Testament was 
published. It was known beforehand that the alterations 
of the Authorised Version would not be very material. 
One might have thought that a slightly modified transla- 
tion of an old book, the general contents of which were 
well known before, could not create a very large demand. 
But so intense is the interest which this old Book has 
awakened in itself, that the Oxford University Press alone 
received orders in advance for more than a million copies. 
When it was actually published, the demand for copies, 
both here and in America, exceeded the powers of the 
printing press to keep up with them. One newspaper in 
Chicago published the entire New Testament in its issue 
of May 22, 1881, the greater portion having been trans- 
mitted from New York by telegraph. How can the sceptic 
account for this extraordinary and universal eagerness to 
obtain copies of the New Version of this old book, if, as 



INTRODUCTORY LETTER. XV 

he says, it has long since been proved to be in the main a 
collection of fictitious histories and fantastic dreamings ! 

Meanwhile, the Old Version goes on circulating at th e 
rate of about six million copies a year. The issue of the 
British and Foreign Bible Society for 1882 was 2,964,636 
copies ; and after careful examination of the statistics 
kindly furnished to me by the secretaries of this and other 
societies, I calculate that about an equal number are 
supplied from all other societies and private publishing 
houses taken together, The largest proportion of these 
are in the English tongue, but it is worthy of special 
notice that the whole Bible, or considerable portions of 
it, have been translated into 298 languages and dialects, 
and these have found a welcome wherever they have 
come. Now, it would be vain for the sceptic to try to 
evade the force of these facts by saying, "It is easy 
enough to account for the numerous translations and ex- 
tensive circulation of the Scriptures when there are large 
and wealthy societies formed for that express purpose " — 
because it is the Bible itself that has called these societies 
into existence. There has lately been formed a " Browning 
Society," for the purpose of promoting the study of the 
works of Robert Browning. Should the result be that the 
works of Robert Browning circulate at the rate of six 
millions a year in three hundred different languages, it 
will not in the least impair the tribute due to the author's 
genius to say that this result has been affected through 
the agency of a society which his own works created and 
inspired. 

4. The same remark applies to the one other fact I 
would bring before your notice, viz. the enormous influence 
which the Bible has had on all modern literature ; and the 



XVI INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 

vast amount which it has directly called into existence. It 
has permeated all the streams of poetic, aesthetic, philo- 
sophic, and even historical literature. Traces of the Bible 
are to be found on the pages of every author outside the 
realms of mere technical science ; and the orator in- 
voluntarily quotes its phrases as the most forcible way of 
expressing his sentiments, and emphasizing his periods ; 
while the books expressly written to expound the con- 
tents and enforce the teaching of this one volume, would 
form no insignificant proportion of the entire mass of 
literature of all kinds taken together. Twenty-one volumes 
of the Catalogue of the Library of the British Museum 
are devoted to the single heading, " Bible ; " and yet these 
twenty-one volumes by no means embrace the titles of all 
the books in that library written, about the Bible ; many, 
probably the greater number, being classified under other 
headings, such as the author's name, etc. This is a unique 
phenomenon. The nearest approach to it is in the case of 
the works of Shakespeare, who has his name at the head 
of five and a quarter volumes of the above catalogue ; and 
he is admitted to be the greatest dramatic genius the 
world has ever seen, 

Now the writers of the Bible were for the most part 
men of very imperfect education, belonging to an in- 
significant people, dwelling in a little strip of land no 
larger than Wales, in a corner of Asia, where they were 
cut off from intercourse with the great literary nations of 
antiquity. If there were no Divine power guiding their 
intellect and furthering their work, how is it possible that 
it should have had such results ? I would advise you to 
ponder carefully these facts on which I have been 
dwelling, to lay them up in your memory, and if a sceptic 



INTRODUCTORY LETTER. XV11 

asks you (as the manner of sceptics is) to account for this 
or that particular statement or incident in the Bible on 
the supposition of its Divine origin, to shew him that he 
has something far more difficult to account for if he denies 
its Divine origin. Tell him there may very probably be 
things here and there in Divine revelation which you 
cannot explain, but that he must meet you on the broad 
ground of what the Bible is and what it has done as a 
whole ; and that before you enter into these details he 
must explain to you how it is that this Book, written by a 
number of obscure and apparently illiterate men, and, 
according to his statement, full of errors, contradictions, 
and absurdities, has survived all the attempts of kings 
and emperors to destroy it, all the efforts of learned men 
of many ages to refute it, and, in spite of all this, has 
achieved a success which the most brilliant writers of 
ancient or modern times have never attained, and has this 
day an influence on the thought and action of mankind to 
which no other book makes the faintest approach. He 
will find that very hard to explain. It cannot be explained 
except by admitting the truth, viz. that behind and 
through the intellect of the human authors of Scripture, 
the Spirit of God Himself was working, and that His 
hand has guided its history. 

5. This, and only this, will explain another fact which the 
sceptic may be unwilling to admit, but which the impartial 
inquirer cannot gainsay, — that wherever this Book has been 
heartily received, diligently studied, and faithfully obeyed, 
there men have grown in virtue and godliness, there the 
principles of liberty have been developed, and the cause of 
humanity has prospered. The teachings of this Book have 
made the unchaste man pure, the drunkard sober, the 



XV111 INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 

violent man gentle, and the selfish generous. They have 
sustained men under every kind of hardship, trial, and 
persecution ; diffused rays of light through lives that would 
have been, without them, all gloom and sadness ; and have 
enabled countless thousands to face the " Last Enemy " 
with calm cheerfulness, and even with ecstatic joy. Can 
the same be said of any other book in the whole realm of 
literature ? 

I have been the more anxious, dear friends, to set before 
you these considerations affecting the character and worth 
of the Book as a whole, because in the following chapters, 
in the study of the separate parts of the Bible, you may 
overlook the unity which belongs to it, and because in 
dwelling upon the human elements which it contains you 
may possibly lose sight of the Divine. 

To some of you much of the ground traversed in this 
work will be wholly new. You have been accustomed to 
take the Bible as though it were a sacred volume, made by 
the Divine hand, which had dropped down to you out of 
heaven. It may be new, and perhaps at first even a little 
embarrassing, to learn that it grew gradually, during a 
period of above a thousand years ; and to enter into dis- 
cussions as to when and by whom particular books 
were written, and what special circumstances called them 
forth. But if you would teach this Book aright you must 
become acquainted with these things ; and if your spirit is 
reverent, you will be willing to abandon any preconceived 
notions, and to ask simply, How has God been pleased to 
reveal His will ? Now, it was not His pleasure to send us 
this Book miraculously, ready-made, complete. God's way 
was to enlighten men by His Holy Spirit by degrees, as 
they were able to bear it ; each inspired man handing on 



INTRODUCTORY LETTER. XIX 

to his successors what he had written, for their instruction 
and guidance, while they in turn looked up to God for 
fresh light, to disclose yet higher and deeper truths. You 
will find some further description of the Progress of Divine 
Revelation in the fourth chapter of this work. Every step 
of this process has the highest interest for us, and is 
fraught with instruction. The Bible cannot be rightly 
understood unless it is studied, as it was given, by degrees, 
step by step, " line upon line and precept upon precept.' ' 
I trust you will not grudge the labour necessary to this 
thorough study. Remember that you have undertaken to 
teach and train a portion of the rising race in the most 
important of all kinds of knowledge. Remember that you 
have undertaken to expound to them the most wonderful 
book in all history, a book whose truly Divine origin and 
character has been above briefly indicated. In view of 
these considerations I trust you will brace up your energies 
to a diligent perusal of the following pages, fully resolved 
that whatever information tbey can give about this wonder- 
ful Book you will make that information your own. It 
will be of no use whatever to give this little work a slight 
reading. It must be thoroughly studied. The first two 
chapters in particular will require patient and earnest 
attention. Do not be discouraged if you cannot grasp the 
exact bearing of every point at the first perusal. There is 
nothing beyond your powers of comprehension if you will 
give your mind to the task, and you may have the consola- 
tion of knowing that you will find " plainer sailing " further 
on. Do not shirk the trouble of looking up the Scripture 
references. To have quoted the words at length would 
have increased this volume to nearly double its size ; but if 
you neglect to turn them up, you will miss a good deal of 



XX INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 

the profit you would otherwise gain, and in some cases 
miss the entire force of the argument. The Bible has 
come down to you in its present form through the almost 
infinite pain, and labour of your forefathers. Surely it is 
not too much to expect that the heritage which they havu 
won for you with sweat of brain and shedding of blood, 
will be by you at least diligently explored. 

My little book makes no pretensions to originality. Mosi 
of what it contains, you will find said, and better said, else- 
where, — only, in books of larger cost, and less easily acces- 
sible to you. To some of those works I have referred you 
at the end of each chapter. Most of them will be found in 
any good library, and if you have access to such, you may 
study them there. The less expensive ones I hope you 
will by degrees make your own, and thus acquire for your- 
selves a Sunday school teacher's library, which will be of 
great assistance to you in your work. If the following 
pages arouse in your minds earnest desire to pursue Biblical 
study much further than they themselves can carry you, 
they will not have been written in vain. May the God 
who inspired "the Sunday School Text-book " aid you in 
all your endeavours to get at the " wealth of wisdom and 
knowledge hidden therein, ,, and make this little book a 
useful instrument in your hand, as you seek to explore the 
mine, and bring forth its treasures for the enrichment of 

your classes. 

Tour affectionate Friend, 

THE AUTHOR. 



THE BIBLE: 
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 



CHAPTER I. 

ON THE EVIDENCES OF THE AUTHENTICITY AND GENUINENESS 
OF THE SACRED WRITINGS. 

" We have not followed cunningly devised fables," says 
Peter, "when we male known unto you the power and 
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ ; " and when the Sunday 
school teacher takes the Bible as his text-book, he should 
have a firm and rational conviction that he is not asking 
his class to follow cunningly devised fables, but a reliable 
record of the most momentous facts in the world's history. 
The sacred writings which constitute the record are divided 
into two portions, the Old and the New Testaments. In 
order of time the Old precedes the New ; but for that very 
reason we shall first consider the evidences for the authen- 
ticity and genuineness of the writings which compose the 
New. They are nearer to us. The evidence is more acces- 
sible. If it is insufficient — if the writings of the New 
Testament are untrustworthy, it will be vain to prosecute 
our inquiry with reference to the still earlier writings of 
the Old i but on the other hand, if we can show that these 

B 



2 THR BIBLE: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

books arc genuine productions of the apostolic age, then 
we may use with confidence any evidence which they 
supply tc establish the authority of the older scriptures. 



1. New Testament. 

St. Augustine, who wrote in the latter part of the fourth 
century, says, " We know the writings of the apostles as 
we know the works of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Varro, and 
others to be theirs, forasmuch as they have the testimony 
of contemporaries, and of those who lived in succeeding 
times. Shall any be so foolish and unreasonable as to 
deny or to dispute the credibility of such a testimony to 
the Scriptures which would be allowed in behalf of any 
writings whatever ? " 

This is true ; but it is only part of the truth ; for the 
testimony of succeeding authors to the authenticity of 
the apostolic writings is far stronger than any that can 
be adduced for the works of classical antiquity ; # and 
Augustine leaves out of account the internal evidence 
derived from the writings themselves, which in many cases 
is of itself sufficient to show that they are genuine. We 
shall begin with this branch of evidence, and devote the 
most attention to it ; because every reader can test it for 
himself. He does not need to take on trust a number 
of quotations from books that he has never seen ; and to 
accept dates for their authorship which he has no means 
of verifying. He can take the New Testament by itself, and 
by careful examination of its contents satisfy himself that 
he is not " following cunningly devised fables ; " that these 
writings are not the inventions of a later age, which the 
writers tried to pass off as the works of the apostles, but 
genuine productions of the apostolic men who laid the 
foundations of the Christian Church. 

* See Appendix A. 



PAULINE EPISTLES EVIDENTLY BY A JEW. 



1. Internal Evidence (Pauline Epistles). 

When we examine the contents of the New Testament, 
we find first five books in the form of narrative; then a 
collection of letters, and last a writing of prophetic character. 
The first five books do not name their respective authors, the 
superscription (" Gospel according to Matthew," " Gospel 
according to Mark," etc.) being no part of the original 
document ; but the first thirteen letters all purport to have 
been written by a person named Paul, who calls himself 
an apostle of Jesus Christ, and who is the central figure 
in the narrative treatise immediately preceding, i.e. the 
Book of Acts. 

Let us begin with these letters that distinctly claim to 
be Paul's, and see whether the claim can be made good 
from internal evidence. 

As to General Characteristics, we find first of all 
that they were certainly written by a Jew. Though the 
language is Greek, it contains Hebrew words and idioms. 
The quotations from the Old Testament are very numerous ; 
they are generally introduced by the words " it is written," 
the common formula of the Jews in quoting their Scrip- 
tures. They contain many allusions to Jewish feasts and 
customs. The style of argument in some passages is just 
that which we know was employed by Jewish Rabbis ; the 
dignity and special prerogatives of the Jewish nation are 
maintained ; and the eloquent outburst of feeling in Rom. 
ix. 1-5 could only have proceeded from a devout and 
enthusiastic Jew. The writer himself tells us that he was 
brought up after the strictest sect of the Jewish religion ; 
and the whole style of the letters is in keeping with that 
statement. We next observe that the writer had evidently 
been a bitter persecutor of Christianity at first, but was 
after his conversion imbued with the spirit of the gospel in 
its deepest, broadest, freest form ; rising completely above 



4 THE BIBLE: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

the narrowness and sectarianism of his Jewish training, 
denouncing all attempts to impose Jewish rites on the 
converts from heathenism, addressing himself for the most 
part to Gentiles, and as "the apostle of the Gentiles" 
" magnifying his office.' ' We observe further, that though 
the writer must have been a Jew by birth and training, he 
had evidently been brought into closest contact with Greek 
civilization. The language he writes is good Greek, with 
the slight Hebrew colouring noted above. He frequently 
draws illustrations from the Greek games. He quotes 
from a Greek poet in 1 Cor. xv. 33, and from another 
in Titus i. 12. All these features in the Epistles harmonize 
exactly with what we are told of Paul in the Book of 
Acts — that he was a Jew ; born at Tarsus, a Greek colony ; 
brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, the great Jewish 
rabbi ; a vehement persecutor of the Church until his con- 
version, and then commissioned by Christ to be especially 
the apostle to the Gentiles. Many incidents of his life 
reported in the Acts are incidentally alluded to in the 
Epistles, and both agree in representing him to have been 
specially hated and persecuted by the Jews, and even en- 
countering some suspicion and opposition from his Jewish 
fellow Christians on account of the broad free gospel which 
he preached to the Gentiles, and his indifference to the 
punctilios of Jewish ritual. Moreover, the Epistles are 
full of allusions to persons and places mentioned in the 
Book of Acts, and which harmonize exactly with what we 
read of them there. Now, it is hardly possible that any 
individual in a later age, trying to write as Paul would 
have written, should have succeeded in securing perfect 
agreement in all these manifold ways through this long 
series of letters. He would have been almost certain 
to fall into contradictions of some kind, either in small 
matters of fact or in points of style, language, mode of 
thought, and doctrinal bearing. 

On these general grounds we should conclude that they 



UNDESIGNED COINCIDENCES IN ROMANS. 5 

are by that Paul whose name they bear, and who is 
mentioned in the Book of Acts. 

But further, this conclusion is rendered absolutely certain 
by the undesigned coincidences which may be dis- 
covered in these letters. Even if it were thought possible 
that, by using very great care, some designing person 
might have contrived to preserve the agreement as far as 
we have yet traced it ; we shall find, on still closer examina- 
tion, points of agreement so minute, so casual, so evidently 
unintentional, that no forger could possibly have thought 
of inventing them. We w^ill give a few instances from the 
first four Epistles. 

We take up the Epistle to the Romans, and we read 
(xv. 25, 26), "Wow I go unto Jerusalem to minister 
unto the saints. For it hath pleased them of Macedonia 
and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor 
saints which are at Jerusalem. ,, Here Paul speaks of a 
collection that had been made in two European Churches 
for the poor brethren in Jerusalem, the proceeds of which 
were to be taken thither by Paul himself. Now, turning 
to 2 Cor. viii. 1-4, we read, " Moreover, brethren, we do 
you to wit of the grace of God bestowed on the Churches 
of Macedonia, how that in a great trial of affliction the 
abundance of their joy and of their deep poverty abounded 
unto the riches of their liberality. For to their power, I 
bear record, yea, and beyond their power they were willing of 
themselves ; praying us with much entreaty that we would 
receive the gift, and take upon us the fellowship of the 
ministering to the saints." See also ix. 1, 2: "I know 
the forwardness of your mind . . . that Achaia was ready 
a year ago." Neither of these passages say what poor saints 
the collection was for ; but if we now turn to 1 Cor. xvi. 
1-4 (remembering that Corinth was the capital of Achaia) 
we there find Paul giving directions about this same col- 
lection, and adding, " When I come, whomsoever ye shall 
approve by your letters, them will I send to bring your 



6 TUB BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEKT-BOOK. 

liberality unto Jerusalem. And if it be meet that I go also, 
they shall go with me." Here we have the place mentioned 
to which the contributions were destined, but these pas- 
sages still leave it uncertain whether Paul did actually 
bring these contributions to Jerusalem, as stated in the 
Epistle to the Romans. So we take up the Book of Acts. 
There we read first of his purpose to travel through 
Macedonia and Achaia (the very places where the collec- 
tions were to be made) to Jerusalem (xix. 21). Then we 
find (xx. and xxi.), that he executed his purpose and 
duly reached Jerusalem ; only nothing is said yet of any 
collection : but after he has been taken prisoner and carried 
to Caesarea, when he is making his defence before the 
governor Felix, and arguing that he had done no harm to 
the Jews, it drops out quite incidentally that he had 
brought these contributions with him. " Now after many 
years (i.e. of absence from Jerusalem) I came to bring 
alms to my nation, and offerings " (Acts xxi v. 17). 

So the statement with which we began in the Epistle to 
the Romans is confirmed in all its parts. But the con- 
firmation has to be hunted up from three different writings 
and half a dozen different passages. It is evidently not the 
work of design. It would never have occurred to a forger 
of the Epistles to put in those three scattered passages in 
the Corinthians merely to establish something that he had 
said quite incidentally in the Epistle to the Romans. Still 
less could the writer of the Book of Acts have been think- 
ing about these texts in the Epistles, and put in that piece 
in Paul's defence before Felix for the sake of confirming 
them. All these allusions come in quite naturally in their 
own place. They are evidently undesigned, but they fit in 
exactly. They could only occur so in the writings of one 
actually concerned in the events. Hence they not only 
prove the genuineness of the Epistles, but show that the 
Boole of Acts is authentic history. Many other similar cases 
of undesigned coincidences might be cited from the Romans. 



UNDESIGNED COINCIDENCES IN I. CORINTHIANS. 7 

Take up now the First Epistle to the Corinthians. 

The whole of the circumstances under which the Epistle 
was written, and the way they came out, though perfectly 
natural in themselves, are not such as it would have been 
at all likely that a forger should invent. It appears from 
1 Cor. vii. 1, that the Corinthians had written a letter to 
Paul asking for direction upon certain matters of interest 
to the Church, such as the desirability of marriage, the 
lawfulness of eating things that had been offered to idols, 
etc. It also appears, frgm other parts of the Epistle, that 
there were certain disgraceful proceedings in the Church 
at Corinth, about which the Corinthians had not said a 
word in their letter, but of which Paul had heard through 
other sources. "It hath been declared unto me of you, 
my brethren, by them which are of the house of Ghloe, 
that there are contentions among you " (i. 11). Again, 
" It is reported commonly that there is fornication among 
you"(v. 1). Again, " When ye come together . . . Ihear 
that there be divisions among you ; and I partly believe 
it " (xi. 18). Paul is so distressed at this, that he occupies 
six chapters of the Epistle in reproving them for these 
faults, and not till the seventh chapter does he take up the 
questions on which they had written to him. Not till 
then, and then almost incidentally, does he mention their 
letter at all " Now concerning the things whereof ye 
wrote unto me," etc. (vii. 1). ISTow, how natural all this 
is on the supposition that the letter is genuine ; how 
natural that the Corinthians should have said nothing in 
their letter about the scandals in their Church, and that 
the bad news should only have come to Paul in a round- 
about way. But these very grave scandals having come 
to his knowledge, how natural that they should be the 
first thing he takes notice of. How extremely improbable 
that any forger should go to work in this fashion, first 
conceiving the idea of Paul's writing a letter to the 
Corinthians in answer to one received from them, and yet 



8 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

suppressing all mention of their letter till he was half-way 
through the Epistle. On the face of it the Epistle is 
genuine. Let us, however, examine some of the particular 
coincidences. In 1 Cor. iv. 12, Paul says, describing his 
toilsome life, "We labour working with our hands;" as 
likewise in 1 Thess. ii. 9, " Ye remember, brethren, our 
labour and travail : for labouring night and day because we 
would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto 
you the gospel of God." Now turn to Acts xviii. 1-3, and 
you find these statements confirmed. Paul came to Corinth, 
and finding a certain Jew, Apollos, with his wife Priscilla, 
"because he was the same craft, he abode with them, and 
wrought: for by their occupation they were tentmakers." 
For another coincidence in this epistle turn to i. 12, 
" Every one of you saith, I am of Paul ; and I of Apollos ; 
and I of Cephas," etc. Also to iii. 4-6, " One saith, I am 
of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos. . . . Who then 
is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye 
believed? ... J have planted, Apollos watered; but God 
gave the increase." Now, when we examine the Book of 
Acts, we find that this is just what is represented as 
actually taking place. Paul founded the Church, and 
Apollos strengthened it. In Acts xviii. 1, we read that 
Paul departed from Athens and came to Corinth. There 
he preached the gospel, and (ver. 8) " many of the 
Corinthians believed, and were baptized." He then left 
Corinth and went into Asia, continuing there a long time 
(vv. 18-23). Now, in the remainder of this eighteenth 
chapter (vv. 24-28) we read that Apollos passed from 
Ephesus to Achaia, and "when he was come, helped them 
much which had believed through grace." Corinth was 
the capital of Achaia, and there Apollos fixed his head- 
quarters, as we learn from xix. 1. The agreement is clear, 
yet no one can imagine that this history is invented to 
support the passage in Paul's Epistle ; or that this allusion 
in the Epistle was introduced for the sake of accordance 



UNDESIGNED COINCIDENCES IN II. CORINTH1 A.NS. 9 

with the Book of Acts. It is only the figure which Paul 
employs, " planting and watering," from which the reader 
infers that it was he who came first to Corinth and founded 
the Church, and Apollos came afterwards and strengthened 
it ; and is hence enabled to trace its agreement with the 
Book of Acts. A forger, if he had used the figure at all, 
would very likely have said, " Apollos planted and Paul 
watered," and thus have been betrayed into error. And 
if the agreement had been artificial and designed, the third 
name, Cephas (Peter), in connection with the Corinthian 
Church would either have been introduced into the history 
or omitted from the Epistle. 

The Second Epistle to the Corinthians is written 
chiefly to congratulate the Church on the effect which the 
First Epistle had produced on them. Paul had rebuked 
them sharply for their faults, and being anxious to learn 
how they received his admonition before he saw them 
again, he arranged that Titus should start from Corinth 
and bring him word, meeting him somewhere on his way 
from Ephesus to Corinth. Por his report he waited most 
anxiously. Now read carefully 2 Cor. ii. 1-13 and vii. 
2-16, and ask yourself whether these touching passages, in 
which we seem to see the very throbbing of the apostle's 
heart, could possibly be the fictitious utterances of some cool 
designer endeavouring to pass off his work as Paul's. One 
example of coincidence between this Epistle and the history 
we have already noticed in dealing with the Romans. We 
find another in 2 Cor. xi. 9, as compared with Acts xviii. 
1, 5. In the first passage we read, " When I was present 
with you" (i.e. present in Corinth), "and wanted, I was 
chargeable to no man : for that which was lacking to me 
the brethren which came from Macedonia supplied." In the 
Acts we read, "After these things, Paul departed from 
Athens and came to Corinth. . . . And when Silas and 
Timotheus were come from Macedonia, Paul was pressed 
in the spirit, and testified to the Jews that Jesus was 



10 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

Chrisfc." Here the arrival of the brethren is mentioned, 
at the time specified in the Epistle, viz. on the occasion of 
Paul's first visit to Corinth. But the coincidence is not 
contrived, for this visit of the brethren is mentioned in the 
Epistle quite incidentally, in the endeavour to show the 
Corinthians that, though he had received gifts from other 
Churches, he neither received nor desired any gift from 
them. Another plain coincidence is found on comparing 
2 Cor. xi. 32, 33 with Acts ix. 23-25. This agreement is 
indeed, so obvious, that it might be looked on as the result 
of design, were it not certain upon other grounds that the 
writer of the Acts was not borrowing from the Epistle, nor 
the writer of the Epistle from the Acts. We cannot here 
state all these grounds ; let one suffice. We have just 
seen that the writer of the Acts speaks of Silas and 
Timotheus being with Paul at Corinth. In 2 Cor. i. 19 
we read, " Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by 
us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea 
and nay." Now we are quite justified in regarding Silas 
as a shortened form of Silvanus (like Austin for Augus- 
tine) ; but, assuredly, if the authors of the Acts and the 
Epistle had borrowed from one another, they would have 
kept exactly the same name in both books. Note, in pass- 
ing, that we have in the presence of these two brethren 
another coincidence between the letters and the history. 

The Epistle to the Galatians presents numerous points 
of agreement with the account of Paul's life given in the 
Acts. Compare Gal. i. 13, 14 with Acts vii. 58, viii. 1, 3, 
xxii. 3-5, and xxvi. 4, 5 ; also Gal. i. 17, 18 (which implies 
a long residence at Damascus) with Acts ix. 22, 23 ; also 
Gal. i. 22-24 (where " the Churches in Judaea " evidently 
means the Churches outside Jerusalem) with Acts ix. 
26-28 ; and Gal. ii. 1 with Acts xv. 2. Notice, further, 
the fact that as in the Epistle Paul constantly speaks of 
himself as opposed to the Jews, " them that were under 
the law," " them of the circumcision," and as suffering per- 



UNDESIGNED COINCIDENCES IN GALATIANS. 11 

secution from them (Gal. ii. 11-14 ; iv. 29 ; v. 4, 11 ; vi. 12) ; 
go in the Book of Acts it is nearly always the Jews who 
either assault Paul themselves, or stir up the heathen to 
persecute him. See Acts xiii. 49, 50 ; xiv. 1, 2, 19 ; xvii. 
4, 5. In Gal. iv. 13, 14, we have an allusion to an infirmity, 
or temptation in the flesh, which is, no doubt, the same as 
" the thorn in the flesh " (2 Cor. xii. 7-9) ; but the language 
in which it is referred to is so different, and the reason for 
referring to it so different, that it is impossible to think the 
one was designed in imitation or corroboration of the other. 
One other mark of genuineness in this Epistle should 
be noted. The main doctrine of the Epistle to the 
Galatians is the same as that of the Epistle to the Romans, 
viz. that a man is justified by faith without the works 
of the law. But, while this doctrine is supported in 
Romans purely by argument, it is backed up in Galatians 
by assertion of the personal authority of the writer, and 
appeal to the affection which the readers had shown for 
him in time past. See Gal. iii. 1 ; iv. 11, 14-16 ; v. 2, 10. 
Now, if these are the genuine letters of Paul, and if the 
account of his labours in the Acts is authentic, this differ- 
ence is quite natural and intelligible. We have seen that 
the Epistle to the Romans was written when Paul was 
setting out for that journey to Jerusalem mentioned in 
Acts xx., and at that time he had not yet been in Borne, as 
appears likewise from Rom. i. 13. Hence he could not 
appeal to his Roman readers on the score of their personal 
love and reverence for him. He could only reason with 
them on scriptural and general grounds. But, if the Acts 
be true, he had himself planted these Churches in Galatia, 
and watched over them with pastoral fidelity. Hence, in 
the Epistle to the Galatians, those appeals to their affection 
and veneration for his person are quite appropriate. But 
a person sitting down to forge these letters in the name 
of Paul would never have thought of making this nice 
distinction in the style of argument. 



12 THE BIBLE: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

Now these are only fragmentary specimens of the 
abundant internal evidence of the genuineness of these 
documents. The attentive student will discover many 
others. On this ground alone we should feel justified in 
saying that these four Epistles (Romans, 1 Corinthians, 
2 Corinthians, and Galatians) are certainly the work of 
the apostle Paul who is mentioned in the Book of Acts. 
But to " make assurance doubly sure," and at the same time 
to illustrate a branch of evidence of great importance in 
establishing the authenticity of other books of the New 
Testament, let us see what testimony we have to their 
Pauline authorship from external sources. 

2. External Testimony (Pauline Epistles). 

"We preface our inquiry by this remark, that since we 
have seen that these four Epistles, by whomsoever written, 
are indisputably all from the same hand, testimony to the 
Pauline authorship of any one of them is virtually testi- 
mony to the Pauline authorship of all four. Now, there 
has come down to us a letter written by a certain man 
named Clement (possibly the Clement alluded to in 
Phil. iv. 3), who was an elder in the Church at Rome 
towards the end of the first century, who therefore must 
certainly have been born before Paul died. This letter is 
addressed to the Church at Corinth, and it contains these 
words, " Take up the Epistle of the blessed Paul. What 
did he first write to you in the beginning of the gospel ? 
Of a truth he wrote to you of the Spirit concerning himself 
and Cephas and Apollos, because ye had even then formed 
parties" No one can doubt that he refers to what Paul 
wrote in 1 Cor. i. 11, 12, and the rest of Clement's letter 
contains numerous quotations from this same Epistle. It 
also contains these words, " Casting off from us all un- 
righteousness and iniquity and covetousness, debates, 
malignities and deceits, whisperings and backbitings, pride 



PAULINE EPISTLES QUOTED IN THE SECOND CENTURY. 13 

and boasting, vainglory and inhospitality, for they that do 
such things are hateful to God, and not only they that do 
them, but those that have pleasure in the same." Now it is 
true that Clement does not here say that he is quoting 
Paul ; nor is this an exact quotation of Rom. i. 29-32 ; but 
if you will turn to that passage you will feel convinced 
that Clement must have seen it, and had it in his mind 
when he wrote the foregoing sentence. He was an elder 
of the Church at Rome, and his words afford clear testi- 
mony that our Epistle to the Romans was written to and 
received by that Church, 

With this unmistakable evidence, dating from the 
apostolic age itself, it is almost superfluous to adduce further 
and later testimony, and we shall forbear quoting the 
passages in full. Poly carp, Bishop of Smyrna, who was 
a disciple of the apostle John, wrote a letter to the Philip- 
pians which has been preserved ; and in it we find quota- 
tions from Romans, 1 Corinthians, and Galatians, with a 
probable reference to 2 Corinthians. Marcion and 
Basilides, the founders of two heretical sects, who lived 
about the same time (a.d. 120-130), made use of all the 
four Epistles we have been studying. They do not mention 
Paul by name as the author, but when, as heretics, they 
appeal to these Epistles in defence of their position, it 
shows that the Epistles were then accepted as of apostolic 
authority. Three other writers, Valentinus, Heracleon, 
and Ptolemseus, who flourished about A.D. 150, also refer 
to these Epistles. In the second half of that century we 
find these Epistles in general use among the Churches both 
of the East and West, and constantly quoted as Paul's, e.g. 
by Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus, Clement of 
Alexandria, Tertullian, and, in fact, by all the Church 
Fathers whose works have come down to us. If any 
further testimony were needed, we might point to two 
ancient translations of the Scriptures, the Syriac and the 
Old Latin, which were certainly made before the end of 



14 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

the second century. Had any one of these Epistles been 
spurious or of doubtful authority, it certainly would not 
have been included in these translations ; but there we 
find them all. 

We have selected these Epistles as our starting point. 
We see that their genuineness and authenticity are proved 
beyond all possibility of doubt. The internal evidence 
alone would have been sufficient ; but it is further sup- 
ported by external testimony much stronger than can be 
adduced in support of any work of classical antiquity, such 
as the histories of Livy and Tacitus or the poems of 
Horace and Yirgil. 

We have not space to give the evidence for the other 
books of the New Testament with the same fulness of 
detail. It is the same in kind, both internal and external, 
though, for reasons which want of space forbids our 
stating, not always so full in measure. In the chapter on 
the Canon the student will find a table from which the 
strength of the external testimony to any particular book 
of the New Testament can be measured at a glance. Our 
object has been to show clearly the method by which the 
genuineness and authenticity of the New Testament Scrip- 
tures are established, and we will now point out how the 
certain authenticity of these four Epistles affords a sure 
basis for demonstrating the authenticity of the other books. 

3. The Gospels and other Books of the New Testament 

We have already seen how in proving the authenticity 
of Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians the veracity of the 
Book of Acts is established at the same time by the 
method of undesigned coincidences. These four Epistles 
further supply us with a test by which we can try the 
other Epistles ascribed to Paul. We now know for certain 
his style of writing, his mode of argument, his favourite 
illustrations, his pet words and phrases. When we find 



GOSPEL HISTORY IS THE EPISTLES. 15 

these same recurring in the EjDistles to the Ephesians, 
Philippians, Colossians, etc., it is so much confirmatory 
proof (in addition to a mass of testimony similar to that 
we have investigated in the case of the first four) that 
they are from his pen. In this way, where the other 
evidence is not so strong as that for the first four, the 
deficiency is supplied by comparison with them, and the 
marks of identity of authorship thus discovered. 

But still further, these Epistles have a very important 
bearing on the authenticity of the Gospels. They do not, 
indeed, quote the Gospels, for the very simple reason that 
the Gospels were not then written ; but they incidentally 
refer to the main facts of Christ's history. We have in 
these four letters — written, be it remembered, within a few 
years of the crucifixion, by a man who lived in Jerusalem 
itself, and held office under the very Council that put 
Christ to death — testimony to the following facts : That 
Christ traced His descent from David (Rom. i. 3) ; that 
He was born of a human mother, but was in His spiritual 
nature the Son of God (Gal. iv. 4 ; Rom. i. 4) ; that He 
had human brothers (1 Cor. ix. 5) ; that He led a life of 
self-denial, humiliation, poverty, and persecution (Rom. xv. 
3 ; 2 Cor. viii. 9) ; that He lived in general conformity 
with the laws of Moses (Rom. xv. 8) ; that He had disciples 
whom He named apostles, and that their number was 
twelve (Gal. i. 17 ; 1 Cor. xv. 5, 7) ; that he endowed 
them with the power of w r orking miracles (compare 
2 Cor. xii. 12 with Luke ix. 1, 2 and Mark xvi. 14-18) ; 
that among these apostles James, Cephas, and John en- 
joyed a kind of pre-eminence (Gal. ii. 9) ; that Cephas was 
also called Peter, and that he was a married man (compare 
Gal. ii. 8-10, 1 Cor. ix. 5 with Mark i. 30) ; that Christ, 
was betrayed, and that (the same night) He instituted the 
Lord's Supper with the w r ords which we find recorded in 
the evangelists (1 Cor. xi. 23-25) ; that He was crucified, 
and that His death was a ransom for many (Rom. v. 6-8 ; 



1 6 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

Gal. ii. 20, and many other passages) ; that He was buried, 
rose again on the third day, and was seen by the apostles 
and many other disciples who were living at the time 
when Paul wrote (1 Cor. xv. 4-6) ; that He finally ascended 
into heaven to the right hand of God (Rom. viii. 34), and 
was believed by the early Church to rale with all power in 
heaven and earth according to His word in the Gospels 
(1 Cor. xv. 25).* 

We have here the main facts of the gospel history 
certified by a contemporary living on the spot within 
thirty years of the crucifixion. Of course this does not of 
itself prove the genuineness of the Gospels ; but it does 
prove that the representation of Christ which they give 
was the representation received by the Church from the 
very first. It shows that if the opponents of Christianity 
could destroy the credit of the Gospels (which they cannot), 
there would still remain indisputable evidence of the 
supernatural events on which Christianity rests ; for the 
evidence is supplied by these four letters, the genuineness 
of which is admitted by these opponents themselves. It 
also goes far to establish the veracity of the Gospels in all 
respects, for if a witness is proved to be correct in some 
of his statements by another independent witness, it is 
always assumed, in the absence of any distinct evidence 

* The reader will note the above facts are cited from the first four 
Epistles only. If we take the other Epistles we find reference to the 
following additional events in our Lord's life. The temptation 
(Heb. ii. 18, iv. 15) ; the transfiguration (2 Pet. ii. 17, 18) ; the 
agony in the garden (Heb. v. 7) ; the trial before Pontius Pilate 
(1 Tim. vi. 13) ; and the fact that the place where he was crucified 
was outside Jerusalem (Heb. xiii. 12). It may also be inferred from 
the Pauline Epistles that Christ had instituted the ordinance of 
baptism (Rom. vi. 3; Gal. iii. 27 ; 1 Cor. i. 13-17). It may seem odd 
to quote the words, " Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the 
gospel," as a proof that Christ instituted baptism; but the meaning 
undoubtedly is, " Christ sent me indeed to baptize ; but much more 
to preach the gospel." It is well the Sunday school teacher should 
bear in mind that this is almost always the force of this construction 
("not," etc., " but," etc.). Let him refer for confirmation to Matt. x. 
20; John vii. 16, xii. 44, xiv. 24. 



INTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE GOSPELS. 17 

to the contrary, that his other statements are correct 
also. 

But this is far from being the only evidence in favour of 
the Gospels. 

The internal evidence and the external testimony are 
little inferior to that for the Pauline Epistles. As in these 
last, so in the four evangelists, there are innumerable 
coincidences which cannot be the result of design : for, 
though they agree in all important points, there are a 
number of small differences and apparent contradictions 
which show that no one of the Gospels could have been 
copied from the others. Such differences almost always 
occur in the testimony of any witnesses, however truthful, 
who give their testimony independently of each other. A 
complete knowledge of all the circumstances would no 
doubt enable us to reconcile most of the discrepancies, 
as we shall show later on in the section " Scripture 
Difficulties.' * As it is, they are of value, as showing 
that the four accounts are independent. Their authentic 
character is further confirmed by comparison of their con- 
tents with other than Scripture writers. They contain 
many allusions to persons, places, and events in Palestine, 
which have been verified from other sources of information. 
The simplicity of the narratives, the graphic touches here 
and there, and the minute details given concerning many 
of the events point to eye-witnesses or those who had 
received information from eye-witnesses, as the authors. 
They are not at all like the inventions of fiction in a crude 
and unliterary age. Moreover, as in the case of the 
Epistles, so in the case of the Gospels, a series of writers 
from the beginning of the second century onwards quote 
them, and refer to them as of Divine authority. A few 
specimens of this evidence must suffice. 

Papias was a companion of Poly carp, who was a 
disciple of the apostle John. He professes to have gathered 
his information from those who had seen Jesus and from 

C 



18 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

their followers. And he says he heard from them that 
"Matthew wrote his oracles in Hebrew, and every one 
interpreted them as best he could ; " and that " Mark, 
having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down 
accurately whatever he remembered of what was either 
said or done by Christ." 

Justin, a native of Samaria, addressed an Apology 
or Defence of Christianity to the Roman emperor between 
the years 140 and 150 a.d., which has been preserved. 
In it he says, speaking of the Lord's Supper, that 
" the apostles in the memoirs composed by them, which 
are called Gospels, have thus delivered it, that Jesus 
commanded them to take bread and give thanks," etc. 
Again : " In the commentaries, which, as I have said, 
were composed by the apostles and their followers, it is 
written that His sweat fell like drops of blood." Justin 
also tells us that " the memoirs of the apostles or the 
writings of the prophets were read when the Christians 
assembled for worship," showing that they were treated 
with the same veneration as the Old Testament Scriptures. 
Irenseus, who became Bishop of Lyons in a.d. 177, 
tells us that " Matthew among the Jews wrote a Gospel in 
their own language. . . . Mark also, the disciple and inter- 
preter of Peter, delivered to us in writing the things that 
had been preached by Peter ; and Luke, the companion of 
Paul, put down in a book the gospel that had been 
preached by him. Afterwards John, the disciple of the 
Lord, who also leaned on His breast, .likewise put forth a 
Gospel while he dwelt at Ephesus in Asia." 

We have passed over many slight references to one or 
other of the Gospels in writers who lived between Papias 
and Irenseus. And after the latter date they were so 
universally used and acknowledged as apostolic that it 
would be absurd to attempt to quote the testimony. If it 
seems strange to the reader, that if the Gospels were really 
written by the apostles and their immediate followers, it 



THE APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS. 19 

should be so long before they all came into general use, 
and that they are not more frequently quoted by writers 
in the early part of the second century, he must remember, 
first, that printing was not then invented ; every copy had 
to be made by hand, and consequently they multiplied 
very slowly : and, secondly, that the facilities for com- 
munication between one place aud another were not nearly 
so great as they are now ; and the Churches were not then 
organized into one body; so that one of them might 
possess and use a Gospel for many years which another 
Church in a distant province had never seen. If, as some 
would have us believe, they were not written till the 
middle of the second century, it would have been quite 
impossible that before the end of that century we should 
find them, as we do, spread over all the Churches of 
Europe, Asia, and Africa, and everywhere acknowledged 
to be of Divine authority. 

One other evidence in favour of the genuineness and 
authenticity of our Gospels may be noticed. Sceptical 
writers sa> these Gospels were made up hundreds of years 
after the time of Christ, out of vague traditions, floating 
myths, and the imagination of the writers. Now, we 
really have some such works as these — the so-called 
" Gospel of Thomas," the " Gospel of Nicodemus," etc. 
We recommend the Sunday school teacher to look into 
them if he has the opportunity. When he has scanned 
the silly stories, the absurd miracles, the palpable ex- 
aggerations, the incongruities of character, and contradic- 
tions of fact, which they contain, — to say nothing of the 
pretentious style in which they are written, and the 
prurient curiosity which they attempt to gratify, — he will 
turn to the sublimely pure and simple narrative of the 
four evangelists with a firmer conviction than ever of its 
genuine character and inspired worth. He will see what 
sort of a life of Christ we should have had if it had been 
written as the sceptics would have us believe, and how 



20 THE BIBLE 1 THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

vast the difference between such mythical products of a 
later age and the authentic history of the New Testa- 
ment. 

II. Old Testament. 

The strongest evidence we have for the trustworthiness 
and Divine authority of the books of the Old Testament is 
the way in which they are employed by the writers of the 
New, and by Christ Himself. Many circumstances con- 
spire to prevent our having the same evidence for the 
genuineness and authenticity of the separate books, that 
we have for the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament, 
such as the extreme antiquity of the books themselves, the 
long period over which the writing of them extended, the 
fact that this was not an active literary period, so that 
there is hardly any contemporary Jewish literature outside 
the Canon which might be referred to in confirmation of 
its contents, and the entire isolation of the Jews from 
other nations in respect of their religion. No doubt the 
same methods which we have followed in the case of the 
New might be partially applied to the Old. In the Psalms 
and the Prophets there are many allusions which confirm 
the authority of the historical books according to the 
method of undesigned coincidences. The contents of those 
books may also be in a measure verified by evidence drawn 
from external sources. Thus, the ancient traditions of all 
Eastern countries and many Western tell of a great deluge 
in the early history of man, and the escape of a favoured 
family by means of a floating vessel. The monuments of 
Egypt exhibit the slavery of the Hebrews under the 
Pharaohs. The Assyrian tablets record the wars of 
Sennacherib and his successors against the Jews, and 
mention by name many of the Jewish kings. On the Arch 
of Titus, still standing at Rome, erected to commemorate 
his capture of Jerusalem, there is a representation of a 
seven-branched candlestick borne as a trophy, which is in 



OLD TESTAMENT QUOTED BY CHRIST. 21 

all probability a copy of the one taken from the Jewish 
temple. The Septuagint, a Greek version of the Hebrew 
Scriptures, made in the third century B.C., contains all the 
books of our Old Testament. We have, further, a history 
of the Jews, written by Josephus in the first century of 
our era, which agrees in all important particulars with 
the history as given in our Old Testament Scriptures. 
And he also cites most of the Old Testament books by 
name. But far beyond the value of these testimonies to 
the veracity of the Sacred Writings, is the simple fact 
that Christ and His apostles used them as books of Divine 
authority, quoted their statements with unwavering con- 
fidence, and their prophecies as words that must be f iilnlied. 
The following Old Testament books are quoted from, or 
their contents distinctly referred to by Christ Himself : — 

Genesis . . See Matt. xix. 4, 5. 

Exodus . . „ Matt. xv. 4 ; Luke xx. 37. 

Leviticus . „ Matt. xxii. 39. 

Deuteronomy . „ Matt. iv. 4, 7, 10. 

1 Samuel . „ Mark ii. 26. 

1 Kings . . „ Luke iv. 25, 26, and xi. 31. 

2 Kings . . „ Luke iv. 27. 

2 Chronicles . „ Matt, xxiii. 35. 

Psalms . . ,, Luke xx. 42, and many other passages. 

Proverbs . • „ Luke xiv. 8-10. 

Isaiah . • „ Luke iv. 17-19, and many other passages. 

Jeremiah . . „ Matt. xxi. 13. 

Daniel . . ,, Mark xiii. 14. 

Hosea • # „ Matt. xii. 7. 

Jonah . . „ Luke xi. 30-32. 

Micah „ Matt. x. 35. 

Zechariah . „ Matt. xxi. 4, 5. 

Malachi . . „ Matt. xi. 10. 

In the writings of the evangelists and apostles, besides 
many other references to the books already cited by Jesus 
Christ Himself, the following are referred to : — * 

* It will be understood that we have merely given one reference 
to each Old Testament book as a specimen. It has been computed 
that there are altogether 265 direct quotations from the Old Testa- 
ment in the New, besides 350 obvious allusions. See Angus's " Bible 
Handbook," p. 80. 



22 the bible: the Sunday school text-book. 

Numbers See 1 Cor. x. 6-9. 

Joshua „ Heb. xi. 30-31. 

Judges „ Heb. xi. 32. 

Ruth „ Matt. i. 5. 

Job „ James v. 11. 

Ezekiel „ Rev. xxii. 2. 

Haggai „ Heb. xii. 26. 

Habakkuk „ Rom. i. 17. 

Joel „ Acts ii. 16, 17. 

Amos ,, Acts vii. 42, 43. 

Hence we see that out of the thirty-nine books of the 
Old Testament we have quotations from, or distinct 
references to thirty,* either by Christ or by His apostles, 
and they are referred to as books having a Divine origin, 
and a recognized authority. Not only so, but the name of 
Moses is connected by Christ with the authorship of the 
Pentateuch, and the name of David with the Psalms. f 
That in many cases the Scriptures of the Old Testament 
are quoted without mentioning the author of the particular 
book need not surprise us ; for it was not then so generally 
the practice, as it is now, to name the author in quoting a 
book ; and even now, in quoting texts, it is frequently 
deemed sufficient to say, "the Bible says," or " we read in 
the Scriptures," without giving a more particular reference. 
So the common Jewish formula in quoting from the Old 
Testament was simply " It is written," or " The Scripture 
saith." It will further be shown, when we treat in the 
next chapter of the formation of the Canon, that prior to 

* 1 and 2 Samuel formed originally one book ; they were only 
divided for convenience in later times. Similarly 1 and 2 Kings and 
1 and 2 Chronicles. Hence a reference to either portion is testimony 
to the whole. 

t Christ does not assert that Moses wrote all the Pentateuch any 
more than he asserts that David wrote all the Psalms. It is quite 
certain that Moses did not record his own death (Deut. xxxiv.) ; and 
modern research has traced the hand of several authors in the 
Pentateuch, as well as in the Book of Psalms. But Christ's words 
at the least imply that the law of God, which forms the core and 
centre of the Pentateuch, was by the hand of Moses, just as the 
Psalms of David undoubtedly form the nucleus of that collection ; 
and He gives to both books as a whole the sanction of His authority. 



OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW COMPARED. 23 

the time of Christ the books of the Old Testament had 
been collected, and, with one or two doubtful exceptions in 
the case of some of the smaller books, were certainly the 
same that we have in our Bibles now. They were divided 
into three parts, known as the Law, the Prophets, and the 
Sacred Writings, of which last division the Psalms formed 
the principal portion ; and they are frequently referred to 
by Christ under this division, particularly in Luke xxiv. 44, 
where he says, " These are the words that I spoke unto 
you while I was yet with you that all things must be 
fulfilled that were written in the law of Moses, and in the 
Prophets, and in the Psalms concerning Me." From all this 
we may certainly conclude, that our Old Testament was 
Christ's Bible ; and this fully compensates for the lack of 
evidence which would enable us to determine the human 
authorship of each several book with the same precision 
that is attainable in the case of the New Testament Scrip- 
tares. 

We conclude this chapter with a quotation from the 
Rev. Dr. Stanley Leathes, which extends further the argu- 
ment last employed, and may fitly sum up the whole. 
" The interdependence of the Old Testament and the New, 
at once undesigned and impossible as the result of conniv- 
ance or collusion, separated as they are by an interval 
of 450 years, and both the combined result of various 
minds in various ages ; the Old Testament containing as it 
does the germ and nucleus of the New, and the New 
containing the realization and fulfilment of the Old, not as 
a matter of contrivance, but as a matter of broad and 
patent history, is one of the most convincing proofs of 
their essential unity, the two parts corresponding like a 
cloven tally ; and it must ever remain an irrefragable proof 
of the Divine origin of Christianity. At all events, the 
phenomenon is unique in the history and literature of the 
world " 



24 the bible: the Sunday school text-book. 



BOOKS FOR REFERENCE AND FURTHER STUDY. 

"Not of Man, but of God," by J. M. Manning, D.D. D. Lothrop & 
Co. $1.00. 
Paley's " Horae Paulina?," with additional essays by Dean Ilowson. 

$1.10. 

Stanley's " Jewish Church," vol. ii. Appendix on the Authorship of the 
Books of the Old Testament. Carters. 3 vols., $3.00 for the set. 

Erskine's " Internal Evidence." Draper. 75 cts. 

Sa} T ce's " Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments." London Re- 
ligious Tract Society. $1.50. 

Wrignt's " Divine Authority of the Bible." $1.25. " Logic of Chris- 
tian Evidences." $1.50. 

For advanced students, acquainted with the Greek and Latin languages. 

" Our Gospels in the Second Century," b} T Dr. Sanday. Macmillan. 
$3.00. 

" Introduction to the Study of the Gospels," by Canon Westcott. Mac- 
millan. $3.00. 



( 25 ) 



CHAPTER II. 

ON THE FORMATION OF THE CANON— CHARACTERISTICS OF 
THE SEVERAL BOOKS. 

The word Canon is originally a Greek word meaning a 
straight rod, or carpenter's rule. Hence it came to signify 
a rale or standard of any kind for testing and judging 
things, whether of a material or spiritual nature. As 
applied to the books of Scripture the adjective "canonical " 
came into use before the substantive " canon." Those books 
which embodied God's rule of righteousness were called 
"canonical." When these were collected together, that 
collection was called the Canon. The word is generally 
used as distinguishing the books of Scripture from certain 
other books called uncanonical, or apocryphal. About the 
time when the latest books of the Old Testament were 
written, or shortly afterwards, appeared many other books 
containing Jewish history, pious narratives, and religious 
maxims, such as the Books of the Maccabees, the Book of 
Wisdom, etc., which though highly esteemed (and some of 
them of great historic value) were not deemed to come up 
to the standard of intrinsic worth and fulness of inspiration 
which entitled them to be regarded as of Divine authority. 
They were therefore excluded from the Canon of the Old 
Testament. Similarly in the post-apostolic age there were 
some writings, such as the Epistle of Clement and the 
Epistle of Barnabas, which, though undoubtedly written by 
good men, fell short of the authority which Christ had 



26 the bible: the Sunday school text-book. 

given to His apostles, and, though much read by the early 
Christians, were not placed on the same footing with the 
apostolic writings, but remained outside the Canon. 

We have already traced the evidence for the genuineness 
and authenticity of some of the principal books, and 
exemplified the methods followed in the case of all. We 
would now indicate the stages by which the collection was 
formed, beginning with the Old Testament. 



1. Canon of the Old Testament. 

First Division, "The Law." — We read in Deut. xxxi. 
24-26, " It came to pass, when Moses had made an end 
of writing the words of this law in a book, until they 
were finished, that Moses commanded the Levites, which 
bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying, ' Take 
this book of the law, and put it in the side " (not inside, but 
beside; see 1 Kings viii. 9) " of the Ark of the Covenant of 
the Lord your God, that it may be there for a witness.' ' ; 
This book, no doubt, was substantially the same as the 
Pentateuch, or first five books of Scripture ; though it 
received some further revisions and the additional account 
of the death of Moses himself. This, the germ of our Old 
Testament Canon, was for a long time the whole Canon, 
and was always regarded with peculiar reverence. It is 
constantly referred to as forming the first division of the 
Canon under the name of " the Law." We find distinct 
mention of this book in the reign of Josiah, when Hilkiah 
the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, " I have 
found the book of the law in the house of the Lord." It 
would appear to have been long neglected, and when it 
was read before the king, he was much distressed to find 
that its precepts had not been obeyed (2 Kings xxii. 8-13). 

Second Division, "The Prophets." — The historical 
books which follow the Pentateuch were written at various 



OLD TESTAMENT CANON IN THREE DIVISIONS. 27 

intervals between the entrance to Canaan and the Captivity, 
but there is no evidence of any collection of them into a 
Canon till the time of Nehemiah. It was natural that at 
that time, when the nation was being re-established, and 
the worship of God re-organized, after the disorder and dis- 
ruption of the exile, that the leaders of the people should 
gather together the records of God's dealings with their 
fathers, and what he had taught them in later days by the 
prophets, and lay them up for a memorial and Divine 
testimony. Accordingly, while Ezra and Nehemiah in- 
structed the people afresh out of the old Canon, "the 
law" (Neh. viii.), they also compiled the second great 
division of the Old Testament Canon, as we read in the 
Second Book of Maccabees ii. 13, that Nehemiah gathered 
together " the Acts of the Kings and the Prophets, and the 
Psalms of David." The Psalms of David, with others 
added to them, were subsequently transferred to another 
section of the Canon. But the other books collected by 
Ezra and Nehemiah form a second well-marked division 
of the Jewish Canon, commonly called "the prophets." It 
included Joshua, Judges, First and Second of Samuel, First 
and Second of Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and the 
twelve minor prophets, Hosea, Joel, Amos, etc., to Malachi. 
The application of the term "prophets" to the historical 
books implies that they were written by the earlier prophets, 
such as Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, or in the " schools of the 
prophets" which they founded and instructed. 

Third Division, " The Writings." — After the return 
from the Captivity the spirit of prophecy died out. The 
worship of the people became formal, the religious teachers 
gave themselves to semi-philosophical and often profitless 
discussions. The warm, quick breath of the Lord no 
longer came with its burning message, which was to the 
prophet " as a fire shut up within his bones," so that he 
felt he must speak, and could not stay. And as this melan- 
choly fact came to be recognized by the Jews, it was natural 



28 the bible: the Sunday school text-book. 

that they should value more highly what remained to them 
from their fathers of this legacy of Divine inspiration. 
The time for the close of the Old Testament Canon 
had come, and it was completed by the addition of a 
third division called the Hagiographa (Gk.), " Sacred 
Writings," or simply C'tubim (Heb.), "The Writings." 
It consisted of Ruth, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, 
Song of Solomon, Lamentations, Daniel, Esther, Ezra, 
Nehemiah, Chronicles. We may take it that these books 
(some of them written about the time of Nehemiah, some 
at an earlier date) were brought together gradually by the 
Men of the Great Synagogue. We have not as much infor- 
mation as we should like about these men. But it seems 
most probable that they were an assembly of elders and 
scribes whom Ezra gathered round him, and engaged upon 
the work of collecting, transcribing, and, as we should say, 
" editing " the sacred books, and that they and their suc- 
cessors continued their labours from about 450 to 200 B.C. 
The persecution of Antiochus (b.c. 168) was the final crisis 
which stamped the sacred writings with their peculiar 
character. The king sought out " the books of the law," 
and burnt them; and the possession of a "book of the 
covenant " was a capital crime. According to common 
tradition it was this proscription of " the law " which led 
to the public reading of " the prophets "in the synagogues, 
an honour previously given only to the first division of the 
Canon. Undoubtedly the effect of the persecution was to 
direct more attention to the books connected with the 
foundation of their faith. The books of the third division 
were not at first regarded with the same veneration as the 
two former, and the right of some of them to a place in 
the Canon was long disputed by the rabbis, e.g. the books 
of Esther and Solomon's Song, neither of which contain 
the name of Gocl. 

The Synod of Jamnia, a.d. 90, finally fixed the Canon 
of the Old Testament as we have it in our Bibles, though, 



TESTIMONY OF JOSEPHUS. 29 

with the exception of two or three books, it had been 
virtually settled long before. Josephus about the same date 
writes : " We have not an innumerable multitude of books 
among us as the Greeks have, but only twenty-two books,* 
which contain the record of all past times, which are justly 
believed to be Divine. And of them five belong to Moses, 
which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of 
mankind until his death. But as to the time from the 
death of Moses to the reign of Artaxerxes, King of Persia, 
the prophets who were after Moses wrote down what was 
done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four 
books contain hymns to God and precepts for the conduct 
of human life . . . And how firmly we have given credit 
to these books of our own nation is evident by what we 
do ; for during so many ages as have already passed, no 
one has been so bold as either to add anything to them, to 
take anything from them, or to make any change in them, 
but it becomes natural to all Jews ... to esteem these 
books to contain Divine doctrines, to persist in them, and if 
occasion be, willingly to die for them " (Contra Apion, i. 8). 

* Josephus reckons the number of the hooks at twenty-two, in 
order to make it accord with the number of letters in the Hebrew 
alphabet. This was a favourite practice with Jewish writers. 
According to common usage, Euth was reckoned with Judges, as one 
book ; the two books of Samuel, of Kings, of Chronicles, each as one ; 
and the twelve minor prophets, Hosea, Joel, etc., to Malachi, as 
one book. There is no doubt that by the four books of " Hymns and 
Precepts," Josephus meant the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and 
Solomon's Song. So that if we assume that he reckoned Ezra simply 
as a continuation of Chronicles, which it really is (compare last two 
verses of Chronicles with the first three of Ezra), his number will 
be thus made out — 

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy ... 5 

Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Solomon's Song ... ... 4 

Joshua, Judges with Euth . . , ... ... ... 2 \ 

1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles with J 

Ezra ... ... ... ... ... 3f 13 

Nehemiah, Esther, Job .., ... ... 3 I 

Isaiah, Jeremiah with Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel ... 4* 
The twelve minor prophets ... ... ... 1 

22 



30 the bible: the sunday school text-book. 

2. Canon of the New Testament. 

The New Testament Canon, like the old, was formed 
gradually. There is little doubt that all the books which 
compose it were in existence before the close of the first 
century : but they were widely scattered over the Churches 
of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The Gospels would be first 
known in the circles in which they originated, the Pauline 
Epistles in the Churches to which they were addressed, and 
so with the other books. For reasons stated in the last 
chapter, a long time would necessarily elapse before all the 
twenty-seven books of the New Testament came to be 
universally known and recognized. Moreover, even where 
known, it was not natural that they should at once be 
placed on a level with the Canon of the Old Testament 
Scriptures. Those Scriptures had long been regarded with 
the utmost veneration as of Divine authority, the one 
sacred rule of faith and practice. It would in the first 
instance be impossible for the early Christians to regard 
these new works, written in their own age, as being worthy 
of the same veneration. Besides, as long as the apostles 
and their immediate disciples were living, it was natural 
that the Churches should look to them rather than to any 
written books for instruction in all matters relating to the 
Christian faith. But in the latter half of the second 
century these living witnesses had died out, heretical 
opinions were spreading, and treatises really spurious were 
being put forth under the coyer of apostolic names. At 
this period, therefore, we find endeavours made to collect 
the genuine writings of the apostolic age ; their unspeak- 
able worth was more deeply felt, and a Canon of New 
Testament Scripture began to be formed. This was not 
done by any concerted action ; nor was the result submitted 
to any general assembly ; but by the labours of individual 
leaders in the Church, and the spontaneous and simultaneous 
action of many Churches in many places. 



NEW TESTAMENT CANON IN TWO DIVISIONS. 31 

Earlier Portion. — We have evidence that about the 
year 170 a.d. there was a general recognition of a standard 
collection, or Canon, of New Testament Scriptures. Thus 
Dionysius of Corinth at that date, complaining that his 
own writings have been falsified, consoles himself with the 
reflection that " the same is done with the Scriptures of 
the Lord." The context shows that he is referring to the 
Gospels and Epistles, and he thus, by the distinctive title of 
the " Scriptures," puts them on a level of authority with the 
Old Testament. Theophilus of Antioch (a.d. 180), in like 
manner, puts the prophetic and the apostolic writings on 
a par ; and so do other writers of the same period. 
Tertullian (a.d. 200) is the first who gives to the collection 
the title of the New Testament. What, then, did this early 
Canon contain ? Beyond all dispute, the four Evangelists 
(Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), the Book of Acts, the 
thirteen Epistles of Paul, the First Epistle of Peter, and 
the First of John. These writings were universally recog- 
nized in the Church from 170 onwards. 

Later Additions. — The remaining seven books of our 
New Testament, viz. Hebrews, James, Second of Peter, 
Second and Third of John, Jude, and Revelation, secured 
more slowly a general acknowledgment. Thus Irenaeus, 
Clement, and Tertullian (who all lived in the end of the 
second century), agree in acknowledging the Apocalypse ; 
Irenseus adds the Second Epistle of John ; Clement adds 
Hebrews, Second of John and Jude ; Tertullian, the same : 
but these writings are placed by all three authors in a 
secondary place, along with some inferior works, such as the 
"Shepherd of Hermas," and the Epistle of Barnabas, which 
were ultimately excluded from the Canon. Throughout 
the third century w r e find the same uncertainty as to these 
seven books, some writers including some, and some others, 
in the Canon. Origen (a.d. 240) includes them all, though 
he mentions Jude, Second of Peter, Second and Third of 
John, as " contro verted.' ' The persecution of the Christians 



32 the bible: the Sunday school text-book. 

at the end of this century by Diocletian tended to make 
the distinction between canonical and uncanonical books ' 
more definite.* This emperor ordered the Christian Scrip- 
tures to be burned (a.d. 303), and this naturally pressed 
home for decision the question, what are the Christian 
Scriptures ? The result was the inclusion of all the seven 
books in the Canon, and the exclusion of the apocryphal 
books that bad sometimes been classed along with them. 
This appears to have been the decision of the Council of 
Laodicea (a.d. 363). For though, unfortunately, the list 
passed at that council is wanting in the original manuscript, 
Cyril of Jerusalem, who took part in it, gives in his 
catalogue of " Divine Scriptures " all our New Testament 
books except the Apocalypse; and Athanasius, Bishop of 
Alexandria, in his "festal epistle " of the same date (368), 
includes Revelation also. At the Council of Carthage 
(a.d. 397) it was determined that " besides the Canonical 
Scriptures nothing be read in the Church under the title 
of Divine Scriptures. The Canonical Scriptures are these : 
... of the New Testament four books of the Gospels, one 
book of the Acts of the Apostles, thirteen epistles of the 
Apostle Paul, one of the same (writer) to the Hebrews, 
two epistles of the Apostle Peter, three of John, one of 
James, one of Jude, and one book of the Apocalypse of 
John." So we have a clear enumeration of all the present 
contents of our New Testament, and of no other books, 
and they became the generally accepted Canon from that 
time forwards. The student should observe that their 
authority was not given to them by this council nor by any 
other. The decree just quoted goes on to say that it was 
passed for the purpose of confirming the Canon received from 
the Fathers. Not any formal council assigned to these 
books the position of authority they have so long preserved 
in the Church ; they gained it by virtue of the Divine 
power which they exerted over the hearts of those who 
# See Appendix B. 



NEW TESTAMENT BOOKS USED BY THE FATHERS. 



33 



read them. They were placed in the Canon not simply 
because they were written by apostles or companions of 
apostles (for in one or two cases the authorship was doubt- 
ful), but because the truth they contained so enlightened 
the mind and touched the conscience as to produce an 
irresistible impression of its Divine origin. Hence it may 
truly be said, in the language of the old theologians, that 
the authority of Scripture is from God alone. 

The following table, taken with some slight abridgment 
from Dr. Charteris's work, " Canonicity," may be studied 
as a supplement to this and the preceding chapter, showing 
the evidence for the authenticity and genuineness of the 
separate books, and how they gradually came to be recog- 
nized as part of the Canon. Observe that it does not 
follow that the writers in the left-hand column knew of 
no other New Testament boohs than those set against their 
names in the right-hand one. In many cases only a few 
fragments of their writings have come down to us. These 
contain quotations from or allusions to the books specified, 
but if we had their whole works, we might find in them 
references to many other books of the New Testament. 



Writer. 


Approximate Date. 


Barnabas 


120 A. D. 


Clement 


90-100 a.d. 


Ignatius 


107-115 a.d. 


Poly carp ... 


140-166 a.d. 


Papias ... ... 


70-150 a.d. 


Basilides 


125 A.D. 



New Testament Books used by him. 



Matt., Luke, John, Heb.,1 and 

2 Tim. 
Matt., Mark, Lnke, (indications 

of John and Acts), Eom., 

1 Cor., Eph., 1 Tim., Tit., 

Heb., James, 1 Peter. 
Matt., John, 1 Cor., Eph., Phil., 

1 Thess. 
Matt., Eom., 1 Cor., Gal., Eph., 

Phil., 1 and 2 Tim., 1 Peter, 

1 John. 
Matt., Mark, 1 Peter, 1 John, 

Rev. 
Matt., Luke, John, Romans, 1 

and 2 Cor., Eph., Col., 1 Peter. 
D 



34 



THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 



Writer. 



Marcion... 

Justin Martyr 

Valentinus 
Heracleon 

Ptolemgeus 
Tatian ... 

Athenagoras 
Theophilus 

Syriac Version 

Old Latin Version 

Muratorian Canon 

Irenaaus 

Clement of Alex- 
andria 
Tertullian 

Origen ... 

Dionysius of 

Alexandria 
Eusebius 



Approximate Date. 



135-142 a.d. 

139-148 a.d. 

140-160 a.d. 
Not later than 

160 A.D. 

Ditto. 

170 A.D. 



177 A.D. 

180-193 a.d. 

Second century. 
Ditto. 
160-170 a.d. 
140-202 a.d. 
189-219 a.d. 
160-220 a.d. 
184-253 a.d. 
247-265 a.d. 
270-340 a.d. 



New Testament Books used by him. 



Luke, Eom., 1 and 2 Cor., 
1 and 2 Thess., Eph., Phil., 
Col., Philem. 

Four Gospels, Eev., Corre- 
spondence with Eom., 1 
Cor., Col., 2 Thess., Heb. 

Matt., Luke, John, Eom., 1 
Cor., Eph., Heb., 1 John. 

Matt., Luke, John, Eom., 1 
Cor., 2 Tim., (Commentary 
on John). 

Matt., Mark, John, Rom., 
Cor., Gal., Eph., Col. 

John certainly — and wrote 
" Diatessaron " which was 
probably a harmony of our 
four Gospels. 

Matt., John, Eom., 1 and 2 
Cor., Gal. 

Matt., Luke, John, Eom., 
1 and 2 Cor., Eph., Phil., Col., 

1 Tim., Tit., Heb., 1 Peter. 
All our New Testament except 2 

Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jud e, Ee v. 

All except Heb., 2 Peter, and 
(?) James. 

All except Heb., James, and 
Peter, 

Four Gospels, Acts, 12 Epistles 
of Paul, 1 Peter, 1 and 2 John. 

All except James, 2 Pet., and 
3 John. 

All except James, 2 Peter, 
and 3 John. 

All : though 2 Peter, 2 and 
3 John doubtfully. 

All : but ascribes Eev. to 
another than John. 

Christian books in three classes. 
"Acknowledged:" four Gos- 
pels, Acts, all Epistles of 
Paul, 1 John, 1 Peter, Eev. 
" Disputed : " James, Jude, 

2 Peter, 2 and 3 John. 
u Spurious : " Eev., according 
to some, along with many 
apocryphal writings. 



THE BOOKS CHARACTERIZED SEPARATELY. 



35 



Writer. 



Athanasius 
Cyril of Jerusalem 
Epiphaniiis 
Chrysostom 

Augustine 

Jerome ... 
Council of Car- 
thage 



Approximate Date. 



329-373 a.d. 
Died 386 a.d. 
367-403 a.d. 
Died 407 a.d. 

354-430 a.d. 

329-420 a.d. 
397 a.d. 



New Testament Books used by him. 



All as canonical. 

All except Rev. 

Canon exactly ours. 

All except 2 Peter, 2 and 3 

John, Jude, Rev. 
All, doubting authorship 

Heb. 
Canon exactly ours. 
Canon exactly ours. 



of 



Contents and Characteristics of the Canonical Books. 

The contents of the Old Testament Canon may be roughly 
characterized as follows :— from Genesis to Esther inclusive, 
historical books; from Job to Solomon's Song, poetical; 
from Isaiah to Malachi, prophetic. This must not be con- 
founded with the threefold division of the Jewish Canon 
already noticed. That proceeds upon a different principle ; 
and the order of the books in the Hebrew Bible is different 
The order of the books in our English Bible is that adopted 
in the Greek Version of the Old Testament (the Septua- 
gint) The classification is based upon the style of com- 
position-historic, poetic, prophetic. It is not a very 
good one, as many of the prophecies are couched in poetic 
form, and some portions of those books are historical. 
Within each division the order is chronological with one 
or two exceptions, which will be pointed out in due course. 
The Pentateuch is the name given to the first ^ve 
books of the Bible (Greek, pente, -five"). The Book of 
Genesis is so-called from the first word of the Bible in the 
original Hebrew, "In the beginning." Genesis is the 
Greek for " beginning." The name is also suitable to its 
contents. It relates to the beginnings of human history, 



36 THE BIBLE I THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

and contains the lives of the early patriarchs down to their 
removal into Egypt. Exodus is the Greek word for 
"going out," and describes the escape of the Israelites 
from Egypt, the giving of the Law from Mount Sinai, and 
the erection of the tabernacle. Leviticus is so-called because 
it consists of Levitical ordinances — ordinances for the 
priestly tribe of Levi, either directions for their own 
observance or regulations which they were to see that the 
people observed. They may be thus classified : (1) laws 
about sacrifices, chaps, i.-vii. ; (2) laws concerning purity, 
xi.-xvi. ; (3) laws designed to separate Israel from other 
nations, xvii.-xx. ; (4) laws concerning the priests, xxi., 
xxii. ; (5) laws about holy days and festivals, xxiii.-xxv.; 
(6) laws about vows, xxvii. There is also a small 
historical section (viii.-x.) referring to the consecration 
of Aaron and his sons, and a prophetic chapter (xxvi.). 
The Book of Numbers takes up the history where it is left 
in Exodus ; relates the advance of the children of Israel 
to the borders of the Promised Land, their repulse and sub- 
sequent wandering in the wilderness for thirty-eight years. 
The book derives its name from the two numberings of 
the people at the beginning and end of their wanderings. 
Deuteronomy is so-called from its name in the Septuagint, 
meaning the second law. It is a re-enactment of the 
Mosaic code, suited to the different condition of the people 
when settled down in the Promised Land. While fuller 
in ceremonial, and containing many additional enactments, 
it is in many respects a mitigation and softening down of 
the severity of the first legislation, sacrifices being ap- 
pointed for some things which under the old law were 
punishable by death, and cities of refuge being provided 
for unintentional homicides. The book concludes with the 
last blessing and death of Moses. 

The Books of Joshua and Judges relate the invasion 
and partial conquest of Canaan. Joshua has been called 
the Domesday Book of the Israelites ; but it must be under- 



THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 37 

stood that the division and apportionment of the land which 
it records was prospective. Most of the country was still 
in the hands of their enemies, and had to be won from 
them " with the sword and with the bow." Daring the 
unsettled period which intervened between Joshua and 
Samuel,- there arose a succession of chieftains who obtained 
more or less extensive victories over the Philistines and 
other inhabitants of the land, and who bore sway over 
their own tribe and the immediately surrounding district. 
These chieftains are known in history as the "Judges," 
and their exploits are recorded in the book that bears that 
name. The sweet story of Ruth refers to this period, but 
it was not written till a much later date. 

The Books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles contain 
the history of the Israelites from the establishment of the 
monarchy down to its ending in the Captivity. They are 
based on other historical books which have unhappily 
perished ; but to which they make frequent reference, such 
as "the Book of Jasher," "the Chronicles of King David," 
" the Book of Nathan the Prophet," "the Book of Gad the 
Seer," "the Book of the Acts of Solomon," "the Book of 
the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel," and the "Book 
of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah " (not to be 
confounded with the existing Books of Chronicles). 
Many of these were, no doubt, contemporary records or 
annals, and supplied the historian of these books with 
reliable information. The Books of Samuel and Kings 
exhibit great literary skill, particularly the former. 
Nothing can exceed the graphic power of the narratives 
in " Samuel," which makes them a constant source of 
delight to a juvenile audience. The earlier portion of the 
Kings is very little inferior ; but the account of the later 
reigns is more condensed, and only occasionally gives that 
fulness of incident which is supplied to us in the reigns of 
Saul and David. The same is true in a still greater degree 
of the Chronicles. The First Book of Chronicles consists 



38 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

chiefly of genealogical tables. The Second Book of 
Chronicles covers the same period as the two Books of 
Kings, but it refers only to the Kings of Jndah. The 
kingdom of Israel is ignored, except daring the brief 
period of its alliance with Judah. Many incidents re- 
corded in the Kings are omitted, and several additional 
ones reported ; but in other cases the same events are 
related in almost the very same words in Kings and in 
Chronicles, showing that both writers have drawn from a 
common source. The author of the latter quotes at least 
a dozen authorities which he mentions by name He also 
gives many genealogies copied from the registers, not else- 
where found in the Bible. The Chronicles were written 
later than the Kings, though the history they contain 
does not come down any later, except in the last two verses. 
These are identical with the first two and a half of Ezra, 
and it is by some supposed that Ezra wrote both books, 
originally intending them as one volume. 

Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. Ezra records the 
decree of Cyrus for the restoration of the temple, the first 
return of the Jews from captivity under Prince Zerub- 
babel, and the erection of the second temple ; also the 
return of Ezra himself with another band of exiles, 458 B.C. 
NeJiemiaJi tells how he rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, and 
re-established the ancient religion. His book contains 
many graphic pictures, and deserves more frequent perusal 
than it usually gets. The Book of 'Esther contains an 
episode in the history of the exiled Jews, which followed 
closely on the time of Nehemiah, if it did not precede it. 
It contains no direct reference to religion, but points in- 
directly towards God's care for his chosen people, and 
affords many excellent moral lessons. 

The Book of Job presents, in dramatic form, a discus- 
sion of the problem, Why is evil suffered to befall the 
righteous ? Job's three friends would meet the difficulty 
by denying the fact. They hold fast to the old theory 



THE BOOK OF JOB. 39 

which Christ himself rebukes (for it was still current in 
His day), that if a man is specially afflicted it is because 
of special sin. They will have it that Job is not righteous, 
or else such suffering would not have befallen. Job holds 
fast his integrity, but sees no solution of the problem. 
The true answer is to be gathered partly from the pro- 
logue (chaps, i. and ii.) and the epilogue (xlii.), and 
partly from the speeches of Elihu and the Lord Himself 
at the end of the book, viz. that so far as the righteous 
man himself is concerned, it is a test of his fidelity, which, 
if it stands the strain, will hereafter be amply rewarded ; 
that as regards God, the patience of the righteous under 
suffering is a tribute to His glory, an answer to His 
adversaries ; but, further, that the man and his life are 
but a very small part of the vast God-governed universe, 
and that he must not expect to understand fully the con- 
nection of this little part with the great whole, but submit 
himself to the infinite wisdom and righteousness of God, 
in confidence that the Judge of all the earth will do right. 
The scene of this drama is the land of Uz ; the time is 
difficult to determine, since it makes no reference to the 
history of the Covenant people. It may be even prior to 
Moses ; but many considerations combine to show that the 
book itself was not written before the Exile. It contains 
some of the most magnificent poetry in the Old Testament 
(see especially chaps, xxviii. and xxxviii.), but its beauty 
is much obscured by the bad translation of our Authorized 
Version, which, it is to be hoped, the Revised Version now 
in progress will greatly amend. 

The Psalms are a collection of sacred poetry gradually 
compiled between the time of Moses and the close of the 
Old Testament Canon. One, at least, is ascribed to the 
great Lawgiver ; many others are undoubtedly by David ; 
the authorship of the greater number is unknown, the 
superscriptions in our English Bible being a later addition 
not to be relied on, Nor is the question of great import- 



40 THE BIBLE: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

ance. The Holy Spirit witnesses to His own work in 
these sublime and pathetic utterances. Should any one 
question it, let him produce from the whole range of the 
world's literature prior to Christ, a sacred poem which 
makes the faintest approach to such Psalms as the 23rd, 
the 25th, the 103rd, either in the mingled grandeur and 
tenderness of their conception of God, or the loving 
trustful fellowship with Him to which the writers have 
attained.* 

The Proverbs are a collection of moral and religious 
maxims, of which Solomon's collection formed the nucleus. 
In their own sphere they are as superior as the Psalms to 
anything of like character in the literature of other 
nations. By their truth and pungency many of them have 
become as "familiar as household words," even in circles 
where their source is utterly forgotten. 

The Book of Ecclesiastes appears to be written with a 
view of showing the unsatisfactory nature of all earthly 
sources of delight, and leads up to the practical conclusion, 
" Fear God, and keep His commandments." It presents 
many difficulties both as to its authorship and interpreta- 
tion, to which the best key will be found in Dr. Plumptre's 
" Ecclesiastes " (Cambridge Bible for Schools). 

Solomon's Song is of the nature of a dialogue between 
two lovers, and there is a chorus of " Daughters of Jeru- 
salem," who from time to time join in it. Many com- 
mentators have seen in it a mystical allusion to Christ and 
His bride, the Church. 

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, are com- 
monly classified together as the Greater Prophets. They 
stand in chronological order. Isaiah was the earliest. He 
prophesied during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, 
and Hezekiah. His book is divided into two sections by 
the interposition of the historical chapters, xxxvi.-xxxix. 

* Concerning difficulties in some of the Psalm?, see chap. iv. of 
this book. 



THE GREATER PROPHETS. 



41 



between the prophecies proper. Some critics have assigned 
the latter section, xl.-lxvi., to a writer of a hundred and 
fifty years later date, chiefly on account of the mention of 
Cyrus by name so many years before he lived, which is 
certainly an unwonted occurrence in Scripture prophecy ; 
but the language and style are the same throughout, and 
so far point to the same author for both portions. He has 
been called the Evangelical prophet, not only because of 
his Messianic predictions and the prophecy of the ingather- 
ing of the Gentiles, but on account of the tone of his 
writings, which reminds us of the Gospel in its earnest 
pleading with sinners, its broad promises of free forgive- 
ness, and its sublime pathos. 

Jeremiah has been called the " weeping prophet." He 
saw the long-threatened judgments of the Lord fall upon 
his nation, living in the reigns of Jehoiakim and Zedekiah, 
when Judah was carried into captivity. His prophecies 
are mingled with history which recounts the bitter opposi- 
tion and persecution which he endured at the hands of his 
adversaries in Jerusalem. His prophecies refer chic fly to 
the Covenant people, but the latter chapters of his book 
foretell the fate of Egypt, Philistia, Moab, Amnion. Edom, 
Damascus, Kedar, and Elam. As in Isaiah, there are 
overtures of mercy from the God who says, " I am a 
Father to Israel, and Ephraim is my first-born," and a few 
hopeful glimpses into the future. But the tone of mourning, 
reproof, and denunciation prevails, and he weeps for " the 
sins of the daughter of his people." The Book of Lamenta- 
tions which follows is in the same strain. 

BzeHel was a contemporary of Jeremiah, though younger 
than he. He was one of the leading Jews carried away from 
Jerusalem along with King Jehoiachin by Nebuchadnezzar, 
and he prophesied among his captive countrymen by the 
river Chebar, in Babylon. A chief characteristic of Ezekiel's 
writings is their apocalyptic or visionary nature. In this 
respect they resemble Daniel, Zechariah, and the Revela- 



42 THE BIBLE: THE 3UNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

tion of St. John. A great portion is eminently evangelical, 
and yet awaits its fulfilment in the Church of Christ. 

Daniel was taken captive in the third year of Jehoiakim, 
and rose to eminence in the court of Babylon. The book 
is partly historic and partly prophetic. The latter portion 
distinctly predicts the death of " Messiah," that name for 
the coming Saviour first occurring here. 

The Twelve Minor Prophets are those which close 
the Old Testament Canon from Hosea to Malachi inclusive. 
Hosea, Joel, and Amos were contemporary with Isaiah ; so 
was Micah, though younger. Jonah probably lived earlier 
(see 2 Kings xiv. 25). The dates of Obadiah, Nahum, and 
HahaJckuk cannot be assigned with any certainty, but they 
seem to have preceded Zeplianiah, who prophesied in the 
reign of King Josiah. Haggai, Zechariah, and Malaclii 
executed their mission after the return from the Captivity, 
the latest being contemporary with Nehemiah. Thus the 
Minor Prophets extend over a space of four hundred years, 
nearly equal to that from Chaucer to Wordsworth. The 
limits of this work will not allow us to characterize them 
separately. Their writings are perplexing to the ordinary 
reader from reference to places, persons, and circumstances 
with which he is not acquainted ; but with the aid of a 
good commentary they will repay careful study. Joel, 
Amos, and Habakkuk in particular abound in splendid 
imagery, and clear enunciation of important truths. In 
the last-named prophet is found the maxim, " The just 
shall live by faith," which Paul quotes three times, and 
which Luther made the keystone of his theology. 

We now advance to the books of the New Testament, 
which we shall treat rather more fully. 

The Gospels give us four accounts of the life of Christ 
on earth. They are all of them more or less fragmentary. 
None of them keep strictly to the chronological order of 
events. Similar incidents and similar utterances of Christ 
are frequently placed together, though they actually 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GOSPELS. 43 

occurred at different times. John observes the order of 
time more closely than the others. The first three Gospels 
are called the synoptic Gospels, from a Greek word which 
signifies " seeing together." They look at Christ's life 
from the same point of view, and to a large extent report 
the same incidents and discourses. The fourth Gospel was 
written last, and forms a sort of supplement to the others, 
and tells us much that they have omitted. The three 
synoptic Gospels present the following characteristic 
features in comparison with the fourth. They present 
more prominently the humanity of Christ ; John keeps His 
divinity more in the foreground. They are concerned 
most with His ministry in Galilee, only referring indirectly 
to Christ's visits to Jerusalem prior to the crucifixion. 
John reports these fully, and says comparatively little about 
the life in Galilee. The synoptics report more of Christ's 
miracles and parables; John gives us more of His longer- 
discourses. The discourses reported in the synoptics are 
concerned chiefly with human duties, and the events con- 
nected with the destruction of Jerusalem and the last 
days ; those in the fourth tell us more about the person of 
Christ Himself, His relation to His heavenly Father on 
the one hand, and to His disciples on the other. Hence, 
roughly speaking, the tone of the synoptics is more 
moral, that of John more spiritual. Among the three 
synoptic Gospels Matthew and Mark have most in common. 
The narrative in Mark's Gospel, though the shortest, is 
distinguished by many little graphic touches not found in 
the others, such as the multitude sitting on the " green 
grass," the frequent reference to Christ's "turning and 
looking upon his disciples," etc. It has also two very 
vividly described miracles (vii. 31-37 ; viii. 22-26) peculiar 
to itself. These are probably due to Peter's keen observa- 
tion ; for it was (according to tradition) under his instruc- 
tion that Mark wrote. Still, if the teacher were selecting 
one Gospel for lessons in his class, we should suggest Luke's, 



44 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

on account of the greater fulness of incident and the many- 
beautiful parables which are found in it alone. It was 
probably the last written of the three synoptic Gospels. It 
has been said that Matthew's Gospel was written chiefly 
for Jews ; Luke's chiefly for Gentiles ; Mark's for all 
without distinction. Matthew and Luke alone give us 
any inform tion about the birth of Christ and His early 
years. All four Gospels relate the crucifixion and resurrec- 
tion, and likewise the miracle of the feeding of the five 
thousand. We gain much by these four independent 
accounts of Christ's ministry, each written from its own 
standpoint. Not only is there a confirmation of testimony 
for those events which they relate in common; but we 
have the same advantage in endeavouring to picture to 
ourselves what manner of person Christ was, that is given 
us when we gather our idea of some one whom we have 
never seen, from four photographs taken from four 
different points of view. We catch different aspects of the 
features, different expressions of the countenance ; and our 
idea of the person is clearer and fuller than if it had been 
gained from a single portraiture. 

" The Acts of the Apostles." — This book was evidently 
compiled by the author of the third Gospel (compare 
Acts i. 1 with Luke i. 3). It covers a period of a little more 
than thirty years, a.d. 30-62. The design of the writer 
was to record the fulfilment of Christ's promise to send 
the Holy Spirit, and the consequent spreading of the 
Gospel among Jews and Gentiles. The earlier portion of 
the book relates the descent of the Spirit, and the first 
preaching of the Gospel by the twelve and their immediate 
associates in Jerusalem — Stephen, Philip, etc. It also 
narrates the conversion of Paul. The latter part of the 
book, ch. xiii. to the end, attaches itself almost exclusively 
to him, and follows him to his imprisonment in Rome, 
where it leaves him, ending somewhat abruptly. The 
writer was evidently with Paul in those portions of his 



THE EPISTLES OF PAUL. 45 

narrative where lie says " we " did thus and thus ; and the 
description given in these parts is especially vivid. See 
in particular the account of the shipwreck, ch. xxvii., where 
the details are in exact harmony with all we know of the 
principles and methods of navigation in ancient times. 

The thirteen Epistles of Paul (Romans to Philemon 
inclusive) constitute the chief portion of the remainder of 
the New Testament, and enable us to form a clearer idea 
of the great apostle of the Gentiles than of any other 
character in the Bible. His writings are more argumen- 
tative than any other portion of the sacred volume. The 
correspondence between them and what we learn of Paul 
in the Acts has already been indicated; likewise the 
general resemblance of style and identity of authorship of 
the letters themselves. But the style differs considerably, 
according to the persons to whom it was addressed and 
the special purpose of the writer. The Epistle to the 
Romans approaches more nearly than any other to a 
systematic theological treatise. Paul begins by showing 
the need of the Gospel, first for Gentiles, on account of 
universal human depravity, and then for Jews, because 
the law had proved an insufficient remedy ; next he unfolds 
the remedy provided in Christ, and how faith in Him 
secures peace with God, and ushers the believer into a new 
life. This portion of his argument culminates in the 
eighth chapter with its grand climax, " Who shall separate 
us from the love of Christ ? " In chapters ix., x., and 
xi. he deals with the difficult problem suggested by 
Israel's rejection of the Gospel, and occupies the remainder 
of his letter with the enforcement of those practical duties 
to which genuine faith will lead. The scope of the Epistles 
to the Corinthians, and their bearing on our Church life of 
to-day, has been already sufficiently indicated in our pre- 
ceding chapter. The Epistle to the Galatians was written 
to the Churches of Galatia which Paul had founded. 
After his departure, certain teachers of the Judaizing party 



46 THE BIBLE: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT- BOOK. 

in the early Christian Church persuaded his Gentile 
converts that, though faith in Christ was well enough as 
far as it went, yet, if they would be perfect in God's sight, 
they must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses. 
Paul writes in warm indignation to reclaim them from 
this error, and the Epistle is an armoury of weapons 
against the "Ritualism so rife in the present day, which, in 
the importance it attaches to forms and ceremonies, pre- 
sents a close resemblance to the tenets of the Judaizing 
party. The Epistles to Ephesians and Oolossians were 
evidently written at the same time, and to Churches in the 
same neighbourhood. The line of thought is the same in 
both, and often there is a very close verbal resemblance. 
Their object is to set forth the growth of the Church, 
especially in relation to its Divine Head ; and they both 
conclude with certain practical exhortations to husbands 
and wives, parents and children, masters and servants. 
The Epistle to the Philippians is a letter to Paul's favourite 
Church, thanking them for a present, congratulating them 
on their steadfast faith, warning them against the Judaizing 
teachers, and showing from his own experience what com- 
plete emancipation from the law is obtained by faith in 
Christ. The Epistles to the Thessalonians have for their 
distinguishing feature the frequent reference to the 
" coming of the Lord." The Church at Thessalonica 
appears to have understood from the First Epistle that the 
"day of the Lord" was immediately at hand or had even 
already come (see 2 Thess. ii. 2, Revised Version), and 
thereupon some left off working, and wasted their time in 
idle dreams and discussions. The second letter is written 
to correct the false impression and the consequent mis- 
conduct. These are considered by most critics to be the 
earliest of Paul's Epistles, and Dr. Stanley Leathes thinks 
that this may account for the expectation of a very early 
return of Christ which Paul evidently then had, and for 
the " allusions to be found in these Epistles, which in the 



HEBREWS AND JAMES. 47 

later ones are less frequent, as the writer became more 
familiar with the truth of Christ (John xvi. 13).' ' The 
Epistles to Timothy and Titus are called the "pastoral 
Epistles," because they were written for the guidance of 
these two younger brethren in the pastoral oversight of 
the Churches. Second of Timothy is the latest of the 
Pauline Epistles, and contains a touching allusion to his 
approaching martyrdom (iv. 6-8). Philemon, see later on 
(page 69). 

The Epistle to the Hebrews is by some writers ascribed 
to Paul ; by others to Barnabas or Apollos. It was written 
to dissuade Jewish Christians who were exposed to trials 
of various kinds from falling back and renouncing the 
faith of Christ. The writer therefore labours to prove the 
superiority of the New Covenant to the Old, by showing 
from " the Scriptures" the superiority of Jesus to the 
High Priests, and the transitory and inefficient nature of 
the provisions of the Old Law. 

The Catholic Epistles is a name frequently given to 
the six last Epistles of the New Testament, because they 
are written to Christians in general, without any distinc- 
tion of race or Church, that being the proper meaning of 
the word " catholic." The Epistle of James was written 
not by the son of Zebedee, but by " the brother of our 
Lord," mentioned in Gal. i. 19, Acts xii. 17, xv. 13, 
xxi. 18, who was possibly, but by no means certainly, 
identical with " James the son of Alphaaus " (Matt. x. 3). 
His Epistle is the least theological of any, but eminently 
practical. It would appear that Paul's doctrine of justifi- 
cation by faith had been so misunderstood and misapplied 
by some people, that they thought they should be saved by 
a mere intellectual assent to the truths of the gospel. 
James assures them that that kind of faith would save no 
man. " The faith that is without works is dead." He also 
reproves the sins of the tongue, the oppression of the poor, 
cringing subserviency to the rich, and other failings, and 



48 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

strengthens the brethren under persecution. The First 
Epistle of Peter is also largely directed to comfort believers 
under the trials they had to pass through. It glows with 
fervour, and its tone is just what we should have expected 
from this apostle. The Second Epistle of Peter and Jude 
present such close similarity that some have thought the 
one was copied from the other. The Epistles of John are 
eminently characteristic ; not, indeed, of the John as 
mediaeval painters depict him, but as he really appears in 
the pages of the New Testament and in the traditions of 
the Church — "a son of thunder," a warm-hearted, en- 
thusiastic, sincere, loving man, who in the vehemence of 
his love will say and do strong things. His Epistles 
abound in short pregnant utterances, expressing truth in 
its most forcible form. He ever sets before his eyes an 
ideal, and rejects everything that comes short of it (see 
First Epistle, ii. 15 ; iii. 6 ; iv. 18, etc.). "Deeds, not words," 
is his motto. He has a special abhorrence of anything 
like insincerity — mere empty profession (see ii. 4, 9 ; iii. 7, 
17, 18; iv. 20, etc.). 

The Revelation, or Apocalypse, is also by the Apostle 
John. It was probably written prior to the destruction 
of Jerusalem, a.d. 70 ; but is by some writers assigned 
to the reign of Domitian, about a.d. 96. The book 
is full of gorgeous imagery, derived chiefly from the 
writings of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, and from the ritual 
of the temple. The name, Apocalypse (Greek), or Revela- 
tion (Latin), signifies " unveiling ; " but as to what is 
"unveiled" commentators are by no means agreed. Ac- 
cording to one school of interpreters the book consists of 
prophecies already fulfilled ; according to a second, it 
sketches prophetically the whole history of the Church, 
from the age of the apostles to the consummation of all 
things ; a third maintains that all its prophecies refer to a 
yet future period not yet commenced ; while a fourth holds 
that it contains no prediction at all regarding events and 



THE BOOK OF REVELATION. 49 

persons, bat is an allegorical representation of certain 
warring tendencies and principles. The commentators of 
these different schools are again divided among themselves 
as to the interpretation of the several parts. Under these 
circumstances we would strongly advise the Sunday school 
teacher to defer the question of the interpretation of the 
Apocalypse until he is quite sure he understands all the 
rest of the Bible. 

WOEKS FOR REFERENCE AND FURTHER STUDY. 

The article " Canon" in Smith's " Bible Dictionary/' 

The article " Canon " in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." 

The article " Canon " in the " Religious Cyclopaedia." Edited by 
Dr. Schaff. 

" Help to the Reading of the Bible." By Dr. Nicholls. $1.00. 

" History of the Canon of the New Testament." By Canon West- 
cott. Macmillan. (For the advanced student.) $3.00. 

Bleek's " Introduction to the Study of the Old Testament." T. T. 
Clark. (For the advanced student.) $4.00. 

Bleek's "Introduction to the Study of the New Testament.' 
T. T. Clark. (For the advanced student.) $6.00. 



50 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 



CHAPTER III. 

ON THE LANGUAGE AND STYLE OF SCRIPTURE — THE BIBLE A 
UNIQUE BOOK. 

The language and style of Scripture are not uniform 
throughout. They vary considerably in the different 
books. It could not be otherwise. For, as we have seen, 
" the Scripture " is a collection of sixty-six books, or 
treatises, written by about forty different authors, the 
earliest of whom is separated from the latest by an interval 
of at least a thousand years. The books of the Old Testa- 
ment were written in Hebrew (the later ones in the 
Chaldee dialect) ; the books of the New Testament in 
Greek. These books, moreover, differ in their subject- 
matter, and in the form of composition adopted. Nearly 
every known form of literary composition is to be found 
within the covers of the Bible. We have history, 
biography, autobiography, legal codes, compressed annals 
and registers, lyric and dramatic poetry, prophecies and 
visions, letters private and public, didactic treatises, collec- 
tions of pithy sayings, etc. Now, the Spirit, under whose 
influence the books were written, did not so control the 
authors' minds as to make them either write in a dialect of 
which they had no previous knowledge, or in a style which 
was in any way unnatural to them. The peculiarities of 
the author's individual temperament and cast of thought 
are clearly discernible in nearly every case, as also his 
diction. Mark does not write like John, nor Peter like 



LANGUAGE AND STYLE OF SCRIPTURE. 51 

Paul. Yet, notwithstanding all these differences, there 
are many points of resemblance, which constitute what 
may be roughly termed "the language and style of 
Scripture , "' and which, even apart from any distinct 
recollection of the words, enable us at once to recognize 
an extract from the Bible when we hear it, or to say with 
confidence of a passage taken from any other book, " That 
is not in the Bible." Wo doubt this is in part owing to 
the fact that what we commonly call " the Bible " is a trans- 
lation of the sixty-six books of Scripture into one language 
— a translation finally revised and moulded by just two 
scholars ; so that there is a distinctive unity in the English 
Bible above what belongs to the original Scripture. But 
notwithstanding this, even if the Scriptures be read in the 
languages in which they were first written, there are 
certain characteristics peculiar to them which mark out 
the book as a whole, and place it in strong contrast to the 
sacred books of most other religions. These characteristics 
are more strongly marked in some portions of Scripture 
than in others, and they concern the matter as well as the 
language and style of Scripture. The Sunday school 
teacher should note the following : — 

1. Dignity. — Wherever you open the Bible, you find a 
style and treatment which impresses you with a sense of 
solemnity, and even majesty. There is nothing trivial, 
nothing flippant, nothing frivolous. The little story of 
Ruth — as simple and natural as any tale could well be — 
still carries this mark upon it. The brief letter in which 
Paul requests Philemon to pardon his runaway slave is as 
full of dignity as it is of tenderness, as rich and devout in 
tone (though it deals with a practical incident of common 
life) as his letters to the Churches on doctrinal subjects, 
or his pastoral Epistles to Timothy and Titus. Take up 
one of the Apocryphal books, such as the story of Tobias 
and his dog, or Bel and the Dragon, and compare it with 
the books of the Old Testament, which they were intended 



52 THE BIBLE: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

to imitate; or take up the so-called " Gospel of Thomas," 
with its stories of the Child Jesus learning his letters, 
making the clay sparrows fly, and carrying water in his 
cloak, and compare it with Luke's brief account of Christ's 
boyhood, and you feel at once the difference between the 
dignity of our canonical Scriptures and the triviality of 
these apocryphal productions. 

2. Reference throughout to God and Righteous- 
ness. — The dignity which pervades the whole of the Bible 
is largely due to the fact that all its writers have this one 
end in view: to declare the will and works of God, the 
will and works that " make for righteousness." This makes 
the history, the biography, the poetry of the Bible differ 
from all other history, biography, and poetry. If the Bible 
tells the story of Creation, it is not that it may give us 
some useful information in physical science, but that it 
may present before us in the most striking way God as 
the Author of all that is, and as the Father and the Friend 
of man, ordering all things for his good. If the Bible 
gives us a history of the Jews, it is not that it may exalt 
them as a nation and extol their deeds, nor that it may 
supply a missing page in the general volume of ancient 
history ; but that it may show how God singled them out 
for His own purposes, that He might train them in 
righteousness, exhibit before the world His character as a 
God at once holy and merciful, and by His dealings with 
this chosen people prepare the way for the coming of His 
Son, to set up the kingdom of everlasting righteousness. 
If the Bible contains many interesting biographies, it is 
not that the fame of these individuals may be perpetuated, 
but that in their lives the truths that pertain to righteous- 
ness and the will of God may be set before us in living 
characters. So both in the story of individual and national 
life, it is God and His law that are made prominent all 
through. Prosperity and adversity are represented as 
coming from Him ; His hand is seen in the great things 



THE BIBLE THE BOOK OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 53 

and the small ; the righteous God rules. So with the 
Psalms; so with the books of the Prophets. Their main 
function is not to predict events, but to bear witness for 
God and righteousness. Even the Messianic prophecies 
will be found to have their root in this conviction, divinely 
wrought in the prophet's breast, that God's righteous will 
must triumph, evil must be overcome by good, the 
righteous Seed of the woman must at last bruise the 
serpent's head, if not in the person of Israel as a whole, in 
the person of some kingly representative ; if not by Judah, 
yet by a righteous " remnant ; " if even that " remnant " 
fails, still by " the Servant of the Lord," His will shall be 
done, evil shall be trodden out, righteousness shall triumph, 
the kingdom of heaven (the kingship of God) be established 
on earth. Hence the enormous difference between the 
prophecies of Scripture and the utterances of the oracles 
of heathen nations. They (w r hether true or false) were 
all particular, referring to certain persons or events for 
limited and temporary ends ; but these all bear upon the 
accomplishment of the will of God and His law of ever- 
lasting righteousness. We need not point out how still 
more abundantly this is true of the writings of the New 
Testament. From first to last the Bible is the Book of 
God — the Book of Righteousness. The language and style 
are in harmony with the subject-matter and the main aim 
of the book. They give it a character of its own, evinced 
further in the features we go on to describe, most of them 
traceable to this same fundamental fact as their cause and 
origin. 

3. Suppression of the Personality of the Writers. 
— What Dr. Campbell says of the Gospels is true of almost 
every book in the Bible : " The subject of the narrative so 
engrosses the attention of the writer that he is himself as 
nobody, and is quite forgotten by the reader, who is never 
led by the tenour of the narration so much as even to 
think of him. He introduces nothing as from himself. 



54 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

We have no opinions of his ; no remarks, conjectures, 
doubts, inferences ; no reasonings about the causes or 
effects of what is related.' ' The same applies to all the 
historical portions of Scripture, to all the catholic Epistles, 
and to most of the prophetical books. The thought of 
God seems so to overshadow the writer, that his own 
personality disappears. When we take up other biographies 
and narrative treatises we commonly find the author in- 
truding himself in one way or another, with more or less 
conspicuousness ; our attention is drawn from the subject 
to think about the writer, either with approval or dis- 
approval, as the case may be ; but m reading the history 
of David, or the story of Ruth, or the life of Christ, or the 
Acts of the Apostles, no one ever thinks of the author, or 
would ever ask, " Who wrote this book ? " if that question 
were not forced upon him by other considerations. It may 
seem that the Book of Nehemiah and the Epistles of Paul 
are glaring exceptions They are exceptions, but they are 
of the kind that prove the rule. The Book of Nehemiah 
being in the form of an autobiography, it was simply 
impossible, from the nature of the case, that the personal 
pronoun should be kept out ; but this constantly recurring 
" I " strikes us as something altogether strange and un- 
exampled in our reading of the Bible ; and by its strange- 
ness shows how general in the other parts of the Old 
Testament is the suppression of the writer's person. 
Paul's Epistles are letters written to individuals and 
Churches in whom he had a deep personal interest, and 
with most of whom he had been in close personal connec- 
tion. To have excluded from these letters all friendly 
greetings, all allusions to their past intimacy, would have 
been most unnatural, and would have made the letters less 
effective for the purpose for which they were written. 
But nothing shows more clearly how far the personal 
element is kept in the background than the fact that 
many Sunday school teachers read these Epistles without 



IMPARTIALITY OF SCRIPTURE WRITERS. 55 

ever realizing that they are the letters of a pastor to his 
flock or to his personal friend. So completely does the 
Divine element — the power that makes for righteousness 
— predominate over every other, that the less thoughtful 
reader overlooks the personal human element altogether, 
and sees nothing there except teaching sent from God, 
instruction in the way of holiness. 

4. Impartiality and Candour. — If the biographers 
and historians of Scripture suppress themselves, they do 
not suppress facts ; and the one feature is as unique and 
remarkable as the other. Outside the sacred volume we 
hardly ever find a national historian who can resist the 
temptation to suppress or gloss over facts that are dis- 
creditable to his nation ; and in like manner with the 
biographer, that which is dishonourable to his hero is 
either omitted or palliated, extenuated, and explained 
away ; while, on the other hand, the enemies of the nation 
or the hero rarely get fair treatment. The Bible histories 
and biographies present a remarkable contrast in this 
respect. The narrative proceeds with the utmost candour 
and impartiality. The vices, the transgressions, the defeats 
and reverses of the chosen people are set down just as 
plainly and frankly as their virtues, their obedience, their 
victories and successes. The sins and shortcomings of 
Jacob, Samuel, David, and Peter are disclosed in the 
impartial narrative of their lives, without the slightest 
attempt to excuse or justify them. On the other hand, 
the generosity of Esau's disposition is displayed as fully 
and frankly as his impetuosity and lightmindedness ; 
the redeeming features of Saul's character are set forth 
just as plainly as his faults ; the magnanimous and 
chivalrous confidence shown by the Philistine King Achish 
towards David stands out in contrast with the latter 's 
duplicity and treachery ; and in the gospel narrative the 
Samaritan, the Syrophenician, the Greek, and the Roman 
compare to advantage with the Jews whose path they 



56 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

cross. The evil in good men, the goodness in bad men is 
brought to light with the most absolute candour. From 
first to last there is an openness, a straightforwardness, a 
transparent truthfulness, which we should vainly look for 
to an equal degree in any other book. 

5. Dramatic Style. — The distinguishing feature of 
the drama is that it places men and women upon the stage 
where they speak and act in the presence of the spectators 
who from their speech and action infer their character and 
gather up the story. There is no description given of 
them, no analysis of their motives, no comment on their 
proceedings ; there they are, and what they say and do tells 
its own tale. Wow this is one of the most remarkable 
features of the Scripture narrative. The inspired writers 
place the men and women before us, report their deeds and 
words, almost without note or comment, and leave us to 
judge of them. There is no panegyric on the noble deeds 
of good men, no invective against the evil practices of bad 
men. The writer utters no exclamation of delight at the 
former, no exclamation of horror over the latter. Even 
where we should most expect some such expression of feel- 
ing, it is absent. Not even over the men who conspired to 
crucify our Saviour is there any outburst of indignation. 
No observations are offered on the most tragic scene in the 
world's history. The facts are left to speak for them- 
selves. In like manner with the actors in that scene, and 
with the other personages who cross the stage of Scrip- 
ture history : there is no elaborate description of theii 
character, and yet how vividly that character stands out 
before us ! We almost seem to have known Laban and 
Jacob, David and Jonathan, Peter and Thomas, by personal 
acquaintance. We could describe their character, but the 
Scripture writers have not done so. To take the last two 
as examples. The evangelists do not tell us, " Peter was a 
warm-hearted, impulsive man, capable of strong personal 
attachment, but liable to sudden changes of feeling, at 



SIMPLICITY OF STYLE. 57 

times bold even to rashness, and at other times unaccount- 
ably overcome with panic." Or, " Thomas was a man 
who always looked on the dark side of things, who could 
never believe what he wanted to believe, a man who could 
be strong with the courage of despair, but never confident 
with the cheerfulness of hope." Not a word of any 
such description in the Gospels ; only a few r incidents and 
sayings reported (only three in the case of Thomas), and 
yet the two men stand before us as though they were 
alive in our midst. Their character is perfectly displayed, 
but it is displayed dramatically, by their own speech and 
action. 

6. Simplicity and Sobriety. — Though the style of 
Scripture is dramatic, it is remarkably simple and sober. 
There is no straining after effect, no pompous declama- 
tion, no endeavour to astonish, no note of exclamation over 
the wonderful things recorded. The greatest miracles of 
the Old Testament and the New are related as simply and 
unostentatiously as though they were ordinary occurrences. 
Most writers who had such things to record would have 
expatiated on the wondrous power displayed. The utmost 
that the writers of Scripture say is, " The people were 
astonished, and glorified God ; " or, " They marvelled 
greatly." Even these observations (be it remarked) are 
observations of the peopZe, the writer simply reporting 
what he heard and saw ; and more often even they are 
absent ; the mighty deeds, the awful judgments, the signal 
mercies of God, are quietly narrated without enlarging or 
expatiating on them in any way. Nor can we forbear to 
note in passing, that in these mighty deeds themselves 
there is always a certain simplicity and reasonableness. 
There is a certain proportion between the power displayed 
and the end to be accomplished. There is none of the wild 
extravagance which we find in the religious books of other 
Eastern nations. Compare, for instance, with the Gospel 
narratives of Christ's boyhood and subsequent miracles 



58 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

the prodigies related of Buddha: such as his being tied, 
when he was a baby, to a large mortar, which he pulled till 
it became wedged between two large trees, and then 
dragging it further, tore up the trees by the roots ; or of 
his turning the hairs of his body into hundreds of wolves 
to terrify the villages ; or of his cutting off the hair of his 
head, and throwing it into the air, where it remained sus- 
pended at a height of sixteen miles, like a beautiful bird ; — 
and the contrast with the simplicity and sobriety of the 
Scripture record will be at once apparent.* The language, 
and style of composition, is for the most part exceedingly 
simple, almost the only exception being a few of the 
Epistles. No doubt there are other portions of the Bible 
which it is not easy to understand ; as, for instance, the 
Book of Job and some of the prophets. But the difficulty 
arises either from the profundity of the subject treated of, 
or from our ignorance of the precise situation of the writer 
and the circumstances to which he incidentally alludes, or 
from defects in the translation ; not from any obscurity in 
the language employed. He that runs may read it. 
Teachers of foreign languages have found, when they 
wished to exercise their pupil's first efforts in the transla- 
tion of some book, there was no book so simple as the 
books of the Bible. The Gospel of John is probably (so 
far as language is concerned) the simplest book ever written 
for grown-up persons. 

7. Figurative Speech. — In common with other oriental 
literature, the language of the Bible is rich in metaphors, 
similes, and all kinds of figurative speech. The Eastern 

* The following is literally translated from the Vishnu Purana, a 
Hindoo sacred book : " Having thus spoken, the mighty Maker wara 
created from his mouth a being with a thousand heads, a thousand 
eyes, and a thousand feet, wielding a thousand clubs and a thousand 
shafts." . . . This being " then created, from the pores of his skin, 
powerful demigods, the mighty attendants upon Eudra, of equal 
valour and strength, who started by hundreds and thousands into 
existence." The portion omitted is a long paragraph expatiating on 
the terrific powers of this being. 



BIBLE SIMILES. 69; 

mind delights in such comparisons, and they are character- 
istic of other Eastern books as well as the Bible. But most 
Sunday school teachers will be struck with the prevalence 
of this feature in the Bible as compared with books of 
their ordinary reading. They lend great force and vivid- 
ness to the style, but to the English reader they are some- 
times a little perplexing. He can appreciate the beauty of 
our Lord's parables, and the splendid images that brighten 
the poetry of the Psalms — such as the sun coming out of 
his chamber clad as a bridegroom, and rejoicing as a 
strong man to run a race, or the Lord leading his people 
like a shepherd his flock. He can see the meaning of the 
strong description of the emptying of Jerusalem bare of 
all men and treasures, " And I will wipe Jerusalem as a 
man wipeth a dish ; wiping it and turning it upside down ; " 
but when he reads in Isaiah's prophecy (lx. 5-9) of the 
restoration of Jerusalem, " The forces of the Gentiles shall 
come unto thee. The multitude of camels shall cover thee, 
the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; . . . and all the 
flocks of Kedar shall be gathered unto thee, the rams of 
Nebaioth shall minister unto thee," etc., he may not see, 
at first sight, that these animals are put by a figure of 
speech for their masters, the travelling merchants and 
shepherd tribes of Arabia. Nor may he at once see in the 
following words — " Who are these that fly as a cloud, and 
as the doves to their windows ? Surely the isles shall 
wait for me," — the beautiful picture of the fleet of ships 
from distant lands drawing near to the shores of Palestine, 
in the distance like a cloud on the horizon, and as they 
come nearer their white sails glimmering in the sun like 
the wings of flying doves 

Another common oriental figure which may sometimes 
mislead the reader, is what the rhetoricians term " hyper- 
bole," when a writer uses expressions very much stronger 
than the meaning he really wishes to convey ; as when he 
speaks of the " everlasting hills " or " the boundless ocean." 



60 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

The hills are riot really everlasting, but they are everlasting 
as compared with the structures of man. The ocean has 
bounds, but they are enormously wide. In the East this 
mode of speech is much more common than with us. An 
Arab chief will tell you there is nothing in his tent so 
much as worthy for you to set your foot on ; but he would 
be very much astonished if you took him at his word. The 
oriental for some slight offence will declare that you and 
all your ancestors and all your descendants are the basest 
of mankind ; and the next moment, on receiving a few 
piastres, be quite friendly with you, and tell you, you are 
the most illustrious son of an illustrious sire. The 
language deceives no one. It is understood to be mere 
hyperbole, and is common to all oriental nations. It 
frequently occurs in the Scriptures, e.g. when Christ says, 
" If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, and 
mother, and wife, and children, . . . and his own life also, 
he cannot be My disciple " (Luke xiv. 26), of course He 
does not mean that a disciple must literally hate his father 
and mother, but that he must not put them before 'Him; 
he must be willing even to forsake them for His sake. As 
he puts it in Matthew (x. 37), " He that loveth father or 
mother more than Me is not worthy of Me ; and he that 
loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of 
Me." So when Christ says, " Whosoever shall smite thee on 
the right cheek turn to him the other also," He does not 
mean the injunction to be literally obeyed. It is only a 
hyperbolical w r ay of enjoining meekness and non-resistance. 
In like manner the passage which has so perplexed some 
readers, " It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of 
a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of 
God," would cause no difficulty to an oriental mind. 
Christ's hearers would at once understand, that He only 
meant it was exceedingly hard for a rich man to enter the 
kingdom. In the Old Testament, hyperbolical language is 
still more frequent than in the New. We give a few 



PARALLELISM OF HEBREW POETRY. 61 

instances : " They were swifter than eagles, they were 
stronger than lions'' (2 Sam. i. 23). " Then did I beat 
ihem small as the dust before the wind" (Psa. xviii. 42). 
" Rivers of water run down mine eyes because they keep 
not Thy law " (Psa. cxix. 136). " Their widows are 
increased to Me above the sand of the sea " (Jer. xv. 8). 

8. Parallelism. — This is another common feature of 
oriental literature. It is especially distinctive of Eastern 
poetry, but is sometimes found in prose. Western poetry 
usually takes the form either of rhyme or blank verse. In 
the former case, the sound at the end of one line is made to 
correspond with the sound at the end of another. In the 
latter, the number of the syllables and the fall of the accents 
is made to correspond. Now, in Eastern poetry there is no 
attempt to make the final sounds correspond, and very 
little attention is paid to the measuring of syllables and 
accents ; but the thought of one line is made to correspond 
with the thought of another, or several others. The lines 
run parallel in thought. There is no balance of sounds or 
accents, but a balance of ideas. This parallelism will be 
best exhibited in examples. Take the second Psalm. In 
what is called the " parallel " Bible you will find the first 
verse arranged thus — 

* * Why do the heathen rage, 
And the people imagine a vain thing ? " 

Here the word " people " in the second line balances the 
" heathen " in the first ; the " imagining a vain thing " in 
the second, the " raging " of the first. In this verse it is 
the same thought differently expressed in the two lines, 
and so it is all through this Psalm. 

5 " The kings of the earth — set themselves ; 
( Their rulers — take counsel together 

( Against the Lord 

\ And against His Anointed (saying) 



52 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOJx. 

C Let us break — their bands asunder, 
( And cast away — their cords from us. 

C He that sitteth in the heavens — shall laugh j 
I The Lord — shall have them in derision/' etc. 

But in other cases the thought in the two lines is wholly 
different. Sometimes the second line expresses a contrast 
to the first : — 

" The Lord knoweth — the way of the righteous, 
But the way of the ungodly — shall perish ; " 

sometimes a cause or consequence of the first : — 

* Depart from me all ye workers of iniquity, 
For the Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping." 

" Through thy precepts I get understanding , 
Therefore I hate every false way." 

In the above examples we have the lines arranged in 
couplets; but they are sometimes found in triplets ; as, for 
example, in the first Psalm : — 

" Blessed is the man 
That walketh not — in the counsel of the ungodly, 
Nor standeth — in the way of sinners, 
Nor sitteth — in the seat of the scornful." 

But in all cases there is a balance of the sentences, a 
certain correspondence of the thought which is technically 
called "parallelism." The Book of Job, with the exception 
of the first two and the last chapters, the Psalms, the 
Proverbs, the Song of Solomon, and in general all the 
poetical books, are written in this style. It predominates 
in the prophetical books, and is found occasionally even in 
ordinary prose writing when the author rises to a height 
of impassioned feeling, as, for example, in 2 Cor. iv. 8-10. 

{ " We are troubled on every side — yet not distressed; 
( We are perplexed — but not in despair j 

C Persecuted — but not forsaken ; 
I Cast down — but not destroyed ; 



ADVANTAGE OF PARALLELISM. 63 

{Always bearing about in the body — the dying of the Lord Jesus ; 
That the life also of Jesus — might be made manifest in our body." 

Of course it appears in those poems which are some- 
times introduced in the middle of historical books, as in 
the Patriarch's blessing (Gen. xlix.) ; the Song of Moses 
(Exod., xv.) ; the Song of Deborah (Jud. v.) ; the Song 
of " the Bow" (2 Sam. i. 19-27). One great advantage 
resulting from this form of Hebrew poetry is that it 
suffers far less by translation than if it had been of the 
nature of rhyme or blank verse. In process of translation 
rhyme and metre disappear. No doubt a version may be 
manufactured in the new language which shall have rhymes 
and metres ; but then the accuracy of the translation has 
to be sacrificed in order to secure it. Again and again 
the word which would most exactly represent the original 
cannot be used, because it will not rhyme, or has not the 
accent which the metre requires ; so another which is not 
so correct a translation has to be employed instead. Take 
the best metrical versions of the ancient classic poets who 
wrote in a rhythmical metre (e.g. Pope's Homer, or 
Dry den's Virgil), or take the recent English translations 
of the lyrical poems of Goethe and Heine written in rhyme, 
and you will see how much the sense has been altered in 
order to procure the right rhyme and rhythm, and how 
much of the beauty and force of the original is lost. But 
since in Scripture the poetry of the original consists not in 
rhyme and metre, but in the balance, the parallelism of 
the thought, a faithful translation always preserves this 
without any sacrifice. 

9. These characteristics of language and style, even if 
we leave out of account the momentous truths revealed, 
make the Bible a Unique Book. There is none like it 
in any language. It combines the richness and glow of 
oriental literature, with the terseness and dramatic power 
of occidental ; and displays a candour and impartiality, a 
simplicity and dignity to which no parallel can be found 



64 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

in the histories either of the East or the West; while 
under all and through all the voice of the Eternal is heard, 
and the reader is made to feel the quite infinite difference 
between good and evil, between the man that serveth the 
Lord and the man that serveth him not. Hence it is that 
this book is fitted to be alike the guide of childhood and 
the comfort of old age, the Sunday school text-book, and 
the treasury whence the devout philosopher brings forth 
things new and old. "I know," says Professor Huxley, 
" that some of the pleasantest recollections of my childhood 
are connected with the voluntary study of an ancient 
Bible. There were splendid pictures m it, to be sure ; but 
I recollect little or nothing about them save a picture of 
the high priest in ihis vestments. What comes vividly 
back on my mind are remembrances of my delight in the 
histories of Joseph and David ; and of my keen apprecia- 
tion of the chivalrous kindness of Abraham in his dealings 
with Lot. Like a sudden flash there returns upon me my 
utter scorn of the pettifogging meanness of Jacob, and my 
sympathetic grief over the heart-breaking lamentation of 
the cheated Esau — c Hast thou not a blessing for me also, 
my father ? ' And I see as in a cloud the grand phan- 
tasmagoria of the Book of Revelation " {Contemporary 
Revietv, Dec. 1870). "Read to me," said Sir Walter 
Scott in his last hours, to his son-in-law. "What book 
shall I read to you ? " said Lockhart. " Can you ask 
me ? " Scott replied. " There is but one. Read me a 
chapter from the Gospel of John." Sir William Jones, 
the great oriental scholar, w r ho was one of the first to 
make Europe acquainted with the riches of Persian and 
Arabian literature, says : " Theological inquiries form no 
part of my present subject ; but I cannot refrain from 
adding, that the collection of tracts which we call from 
their excellence the Scriptures, contain (independently of 
a Divine origin) more true sublimity, more exquisite 
beauty, purer morality, more important history, and finer 



OPINION OF SIR WILLIAM JONES. 65 

strains, both of poetry and eloquence, than could be collected 
within the same compass, from all other books that were 
ever composed in any age or in any idiom. " 

FOR REFERENCE AND FURTHER STUDY. 

" Bible Words and Phrases." By Charles Michie. Macniven and 
Wallace. 

" The Superhuman Origin of the Bible." By Prof. Henry Rogers. 
Hodder and Stoughton. 

"The Four Gospels: with Dissertations and Notes." By Prof. 
George Campbell. 

Chautauqua Text Books, No. 8 : " What Noted Men Think of the 
Bible." No. 31 : " What Noted Men Think of Christ." No. 1 : " Biblical 
Exploration : A Condensed Manual on How to Study the Bible." No. 19 : 
" The Book of Books." 10c. each. 



6o THE BIBLE: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ON THE STUDY OF SCRIPTURE WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO 
SUNDAY SCHOOL INSTRUCTION, AND SOME REMARKS ON 
SCRIPTURE DIFFICULTIES. 

The subject of this chapter is a very wide one. Our 
general object is to put the teacher into such a way of 
studying his Bible, that he may be able to use it to the 
best advantage as the handbook of class instruction. If 
he would so use it, he must know a great deal more about 
it than he intends to communicate to his scholars. As 
with any single portion which may form the lesson for the 
day, the teacher who has thoroughly prepared his lesson 
will always have in his head many more ideas about the 
passage than he purposes to utter with his lips ; so with 
regard to the book as a whole, if he would be an efficient 
teacher, his own researches into its construction and con- 
tents must go much beyond what is unfolded in the course 
of his instruction. What he speaks will be a selection from 
what he knows. The wider knowledge (whether of the 
particular lesson or the whole book) will enable him to 
select what is most appropriate to the understanding and 
circumstances of his class, to present what he does present 
in a more forcible and interesting way, to avoid errors and 
possible sources of misunderstanding, and will beside give 
him a sense of power and mastery over the subject which 
the scholars will fee\ though they may be ignorant of its 
cause. 



THE BIBLE A BOOK OF LIFE. 67 

In this little book we can only lay down a few broad 
principles, give a few general directions, to aid the teacher 
in his study of Scripture ; and perhaps he will not at once 
perceive the bearing even of some of these on his special 
work. But we trust that enlarged experience will show 
him the value of them, and that the first, at any rate, will 
commend itself to his understanding. 

1. The Bible a Book of Human Life. — Let him study 
the Bible as a book that is concerned throughout with 
living men and women, with a nature like his own. In 
this respect it differs from the sacred books of most other 
religions. It is not like the Zend-Avesta, or the maxims 
of Confucius, or that exceedingly dull and uninteresting 
book, the Koran of Mahomet. It is not a code of laws, or 
a directory of the conscience, or a system of theology. 
True, it contains the highest law ; it affords valuable direc- 
tion to the conscience ; and all Christian theology is based 
on it. But it is not in itself a code, or a directory, or 
a system, still less a mere string of texts. To look at it in 
that way, to study it in that way, is fatal to success as a 
Sunday school teacher. It is a book OF life in every 
sense of the words. It is the record of God's Spirit work- 
ing in the hearts of men, and drawing them to Himself. 
Two-thirds of it is history, and of the remaining third 
by far the largest portion is connected most closely with 
the lives of the men who wrote it, and can only be rightly 
understood when those lives are understood. Take the 
Psalms. No doubt they are inspired ; the working of God's 
Spirit is nowhere more evident than in these sublime pro- 
ductions ; but all through we hear the passionate beating 
of a human heart — a heart like our own, a heart that 
groans in distress and rejoices in deliverance, that bleeds 
under the cruel treachery of a false friend, and resents the 
calumnies of lying enemies, — a heart that has its alterna- 
tions of feeling like ours, now depressed and despondent, 
now elate with joy and gratitude. Take the Prophets. 



68 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

They were not hermits dwelling in cells or caves apart from 
their kind, but men who took an active part in the most 
stirring events of their day. If we read aright the pro- 
phecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc., we shall see these servants 
of the Lord maintaining a vigorous conflict with the powers 
of evil in various forms, contending against time-serving 
priests and intriguing politicians, inveighing against the 
various social evils which were dragging the people down- 
wards towards lower and lower depths of corruption, 
rebuking the increase of luxurious living, the oppression of 
the poor by the rich, the extravagance of the fine ladies of 
Jerusalem in dress, the dissoluteness and drunkenness of 
the men ; and anon throwing themselves into the struggle 
of political parties, and earnestly warning the king against 
State alliances that must ultimately lead to the downfall of 
the nation. Or take once more the Epistles of Paul. They 
introduce us at once into the atmosphere of active Church 
life. We have already gained incidentally a glimpse into 
the affairs of the Church at Corinth (in our first chapter) 
with its sectarian tendencies, its petty cliques, its grave 
scandals, its excitement over some of the problems of social 
life, and its somewhat disorderly assemblies. We seem to 
see Paul's messengers passing to and fro with the letters, 
his anxiety in awaiting the result, the actual administration 
of discipline on the most glaring offender, and Paul's sub- 
sequent joy at the general obedience of the Church, and 
his tender care lest severity carried too far should crush 
into despair the excluded member. In the Epistle to the 
Galatians we see the growth of what we should call Ritual- 
ism, and the arguments which Paul employed against it, 
arguments which are for the most part equally applicable 
in the present day. We have in the second chapter a graphic 
description of the contention between the Judaizing party 
and the party of Christian liberty, and all through the 
Epistle little personal touches which place Paul's connec- 
tion with the Church in the most vivid light. In the 



THE BIBLE A BOOK OF LIFE. 69 

Epistle to the Philippians we have the picture of a church 
that gave its founder almost unmingled satisfaction, though 
even there the quarrel between two of the female members 
calls for a word of gentle admonition (Phil. iv. 2, 3). But 
the letter is brimming over with affection and gratitude, 
which was as heartily returned on the part of the Church ; 
and this Epistle, read in connection with the story of the 
founding of the Church (Acts xvi.), becomes as interesting 
and as full of life as any page that could be taken from 
our modern missionary records. Even the little Epistle 
to Philemon, what a lesson it makes for the Sunday 
school teacher that knows how- to handle it ! What a 
touching story it unfolds of the good Christian master 
and the ungrateful slave, stealing his master's goods and 
running away to Rome, there meeting with Paul and by 
him converted, helping the apostle for a while, and then 
sent back to his master (who was himself one of Paul's 
converts) with this letter of Paul's, pleading for forgiveness 
in his name. 

Now it is true that Sunday school lessons from the 
Psalms, Prophets, and Epistles, are not often taken except 
with senior classes ; but they might be made interesting 
even to junior classes, if the teacher would only take pains 
to get at the life that is in them. It is to be feared that 
even in the narrative lessons this is often imperfectly 
realized and inadequately brought out. Certainly the 
scholars will not realize it without the teacher's aid. They 
have a general impression that the Bible came down from 
God ; they have no notion that it grew up out of the lives 
of men. The places and persons of Scripture are for them 
invested with an air of unreality. The young woman who 
was astonished at hearing that there was even now a real 
country called Egypt, who had " always thought it was 
only a place in the Bible," is a type of the great mass of 
our scholars. It is the teachers' business to disabuse their 
minds of this impression by making the incidents and 



70 THE BIBLE: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

scenes and personages of Scripture stand before their eyes 
as in real life, and by showing them how all the language 
of Scripture came from, and was addressed to, human 
beings, living as men, women, and children do to-day. But 
of course the teacher will not be able to do this unless he 
has first realized it for himself. He must exert his imagi- 
nation ; he must put himself in the place of the persons of 
whom he speaks ; he must be (for the time) the blind 
Bartimaeus, the sinking Peter, the shipwrecked Paul, the 
runaway Onesimus. But mere exertion of the imagination 
will not suffice. He must find the life before he pictures 
it ; and to find the life, he must look for it, keep his eye 
open for every little passing word (like those verses, Phil . 
iv. 2, 3) that discloses the life, and he must gather np from 
all sources such information as will enable him to follow 
the thread of Scripture history, to understand incidental 
allusions, and to transfer himself in thought to the scene 
to which his lesson refers. Of these studies we will speak 
presently. But let the teacher understand, that till he can 
present the lesson to his scholars as full of life, he has not 
thoroughly prepared it. Children will listen to anything 
that tells of life. They will not listen to dry doctrine or 
moral preachment. It is well if the teacher illustrate the 
teaching of Scripture with incidents from real life outside 
it ; but it is better if he can make his scholars feel that 
the Bible itself is full of life from beginning to end. 

2. Progress of Divine Revelation. — Another thing 
which the teacher must keep in view in his study of the 
Scriptures is the Progress of Divine Revelation traceable 
therein. This point is closely connected with the last, and, 
like it, has been often overlooked. The Bible is the record 
of God's successive revelations to His chosen people, and 
through them to mankind. Now the human race has its 
childhood, and each nation has its childhood, just as every 
individual person has his childhood. The Bible takes the 
Hebrew nation in its childhood, and shows us how God 



PROGRESS OF DIVINE REVELATION. 71 

trained them in righteousness, and educated them in the 
knowledge of Himself. If we have to educate a child, we 
do not attempt to teach it everything at once. We teach 
it a few simple things first, and we teach those in a very 
simple way. We are content that it should have rough 
general notions on many subjects, and should remain quite 
ignorant of others until it is older. So with its moral 
training ; we do not attempt to instil grand notions of 
complete self-sacrifice and heroic devotion, nor discuss with 
it any of the difficult moral problems that arise out of the 
complicated relations of human life. We teach it a few 
simple virtues, and endeavour to cure it of its most open 
faults. We teach it largely by pictures, fables, and stories ; 
and lead it on by degrees. Now the Bible, as we have said, 
tells us about the childhood of the Jewish nation — takes 
us, in fact, to its very birth. The patriarch Jacob was the 
beginning, the progenitor of all the Jews. And he and 
his father Isaac and his grandfather Abraham were in 
many respects like children ; very simple-minded, and, as 
we should now say, wholly uneducated men ; shepherds 
who had led their flocks across the Jordan from the 
countries to the East, where nature -worship and idolatry 
prevailed. Their notions of God were very crude ; their 
worship exceedingly simple. Books they had none — for 
they knew nothing of reading or writing, and their minds 
were unformed, unaccustomed to thought, like a child's. 
And when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt they were 
still children, in some respects worse than children ; for 
they had been in slavery for several generations, and hard 
servitude always hardens, coarsens, and brutalizes a people. 
Now, manifestly in the very nature of things, it was 
impossible that God should teach either the patriarch or 
this horde of escaped slaves what he has taught us in Jesus 
Christ, nor even what he taught the Jews in their later 
history by the prophets. He could neither teach them the 
same things nor teach them in the same way. They would 



72 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

not Lave been able to understand it. They had to be 
broken of their worst faults, their rude and savage nature 
controlled, and their minds instructed in a rudimentary 
knowledge of God and his law. This was done partly by 
express commandments, partly by the institution of sacrifice 
and the priestly ritual. That ritual, with its white-robed 
priests, its bleeding victims, its washings and purifications, 
has been called not inaptly, "the Jews' Picture Book." 
God was teaching them by these pictures, the beauty of 
holiness, the horribleness of sin, the certainty that sin 
entails suffering, the need of vicarious sacrifice, the duty of 
serving God with their best, and the necessity of keeping 
themselves pure, and avoiding contamination by contact 
with heathen defilement, if they would serve Him accept- 
ably. Along with this, and indeed prior to this, they were 
taught to look upon God as the Eternal Self-existent One 
(Jehovah, I AM, or rather He who is, the One that ever 
is), righteous and merciful, who had singled them out to be 
His people, and who would punish all idolatry and apostasy 
from him. The law of Moses (even if we were to limit 
that expression to the ten commandments) shows a 
wonderful knowledge of human nature; and an exalted 
morality which can only be attributed to a Divine Author ; 
but God did not intend it as a final declaration of His will ; 
but as something adapted to the condition of the people at 
that time — the best and highest revelation they w^ere then 
capable of receiving, but by no means complete or absolute. 
This, Christ makes very plain by his own teaching. Re- 
ferring to the easy divorcement of wives permitted by the 
Mosaic law, he says, u Moses, because of the hardness of 
your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives ; but from 
the beginning it was not so " — i.e. in the Divine intention, 
when man and woman were first created, the one was to 
be for the other throughout life ; but (after the fall of man) 
this Divine intention could only be realized by degrees. 
On the same principle the permission of polygamy by the 



PROGRESS IN MODES OF WORSHIP, 73 

Mosaic law is to be explained. Again, in the Sermon on 
the Mount, he says, quoting from the Book of Exodus, " Ye 
have heard that it hath been said, ' An eve for an eye and 
a tooth for a tooth,' but I say unto you that ye resist not 
evil." The people in their rough, half-barbarous state, 
needed these stern laws ; but Christ, when they were ready 
for it, unfolded a higher and a milder one. (Compare similar 
instances in the same Sermon on the Mount.) 

Again, with regard to the mode of worshipping and serving 
God, the progress of Divine revelation may be distinctly 
traced. An outward ritual, a consecrated temple and 
priesthood, sacrifices and oblations were needed to enable 
the people in the earlier stages of their development to 
realize that God was really present amongst them, that 
they were to serve Him with the best they had, that all sin 
was a grievous offence to Him, and that it necessarily 
entailed suffering on the innocent as well as on the guilty. 
Not till the full light of the Christian revelation dawned, 
and Christ had appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of 
himself, was this ritual done aw r ay ; but we observe how, 
throughout the intervening period, God was teaching the 
people more and more plainly, that this ritual w T as merely 
representative, that spiritual sacrifice was w r hat He really 
required. The Psalmist says, " Thou desirest not sacrifice, 
else would I give it ; Thou delightest not in burnt offering. 
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit ; a broken and 
a contrite heart, God, Thou wilt not despise." And 
again, " Sacrifice and burnt offering Thou didst not 
desire ; . . . burnt offering and sin offering hast Thou 
not required. Then said I, Lo, I come : in the volume of 
the book it is written of me, to do Thy will, my God ; yea, 
Thy law is within my heart." (See also similar teaching in 
the fiftieth Psalm.) But the people were slow to accept 
this spiritual teaching. It was so much easier to bring the 
outward sacrifice of the ox or the lamb, than the inward 
sacrifice of the heart. They clung to the notion that if 



74 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

they only observed the external ritual they could live pretty 
much as they liked. So we find the prophets earnestly 
contending against this notion, and persistently striving 
to instil higher ideas of what the law of God really re- 
quired. Thus Isaiah, speaking in the name of the Lord, 
pours contempt upon the sacrifices, feasts, and fasts that 
were observed without the accompaniment of a renewed 
heart and life. " To what purpose is the multitude of 
your sacrifices unto me ? saith the Lord. I am full of the 
burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts. . . . 
Bring no more vain oblations. . . . Your hands are full of 
blood. Wash you, make you clean ; put away the evil of 
your doings from before Mine eyes ; cease to do evil ; learn 
to do well ; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the 
fatherless ; plead for the widow. Come now, and let us 
reason together, saith the Lord : though your sins be as 
scarlet, they shall be as white as snow ; though they be red 
like crimson, they shall be as wool" (Isa. i. 11-18). In 
like manner, Micah (vi. 6-8) : " Wherewith shall I come 
before the Lord, and bow myself before the most high 
God ? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with 
calves of a year old ? Will the Lord be pleased with thou- 
sands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil ? 
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of 
my body for the sin of my soul ? He hath showed thee, 
man, what is good ; and what doth the Lord require of 
thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk 
humbly with thy God ? " Many similar passages might 
be quoted from the prophets, showing how, in the progress 
of Divine revelation, the teaching became more spiritual ; 
less importance was attached to the outward rites, and 
more to the inward dispositions and acts of which they 
were symbolic. One mark of this progress is the diminish- 
ing importance of the priest, the growing importance of 
the prophet. In the earlier history of the Israelites, the 
priests are the most prominent representatives of the Lord ; 



PROGRESS IN THE IDEA OF GOD. 75 

in the later, the prophets. The priests were only the 
authorized performers of the external acts of worship, and 
their duties were fixed once for all. The prophets were 
inspired to teach God's will in matters of the heart and 
life. They got their message fresh from Him, a message 
suited to the people's need in every age. They revealed 
more and more plainly the character of God, and his pur- 
poses concerning his people. The function of the priests 
was ceremonial, the function of the prophets spiritual ; 
and so in the progressive education of the people the office 
of the priest dwindled in significance, and the prophets 
became the highest and truest representatives of God. 

This brings us to notice one more feature in the progress 
of Divine revelation, which is indeed the most important, 
and largely the cause of the others : we mean the gradual 
unfolding of God's own nature and character. Even in the 
earlier stages of revelation He revealed himself to the 
Jews as He had done to no other people. His character as 
unfolded to His servant Moses at the very beginning of 
their history is sublime in its perfect purity and awful 
righteousness, tempered with mercy for those who would 
bow to Him and keep His commandments. It stands 
immeasurably above the conception of Deity formed by 
other nations of antiquity. It was an advance upon the 
idea the patriarchs had of Him.* But the people in those 
early times were not capable of appreciating all the beauty 
and tenderness of the Divine character, nor able to appre- 
hend the purely spiritual nature of the Divine Being. 
They could only learn this by degrees. In the earlier 
books, God permitted His servants to speak of Him some- 
what after the fashion of a man, with emotions and senti- 

* From the narrative, Gen. xxviii. 10-22, it would appear that 
Jacob had not yet learned that his father's God was present in every 
place (ver. 16) ; and that he thought of Him as one God out of many, 
whom he might choose for his own (vers. 20, 21) ; moreover, as a God 
whom he might put to the test, and with whom he might conclude a 
sort of bargain (vers. 20, 22). 



76 THE BIBLE: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

ments akin to those of human nature, and even with bodily 
attributes. In the later books more spiritual ideas are 
presented, but His worship is still to some extent localized. 
He is thought of as being more present, or at least more 
favourable to the worshippers, in one place than another. 
It needed a gradual education to prepare the minds of the 
people for Christ's teaching concerning God : " Woman, 
believe Me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this 
mountain, nor at Jerusalem, worship the Father. The hour 
cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship 
the Father in spirit and in truth : for the Father seeketh 
such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and they that worship 
Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." Again, 
in the Pentateuch God is presented chiefly in the light of 
a Judge, not, indeed, an unmerciful Judge, but still strict 
to mark iniquity-, chiefly concerned to punish transgression 
and reward obedience. Later on, the idea of Judge is 
merged in the wider one of Sovereign, Ruler and Sustainer 
of all things. Then we find in the later prophets the idea 
of God as a Father slowly emerging. At first simply by 
way of comparison : " Like as a father pitieth his children, 
so the Lord pitieth them that fear Hirn " (Psa. ciii. 13). 
Then more directly, but still rather as a Father to the 
nation than the individual : " I am a Father to Israel, and 
Ephraim is My firstborn " (Jer. xxxi. 9) ; " Doubtless Thou 
art our Father " (Isa. lxiii. 16). At last, in the New Testa- 
ment of the well-beloved Son, the full-orbed truth shines 
out: "The one God and Father of all," "not of the Jews 
only, but of the Gentiles," for " we are all His offspring." 
Throughout Christ's discourses it is the most frequent 
name for God ; and all over the pages of the Gospels and 
Epistles, the words, " Our Father," " Your Father," " The 
Father," sparkle out thick as the stars in heaven. We 
have fastened on the name as bringing the fact most clearly 
to light. But it is not only a new name given to God, 
but an enlarged conception of His nature which sums up 



THE BIBLE TO BE STUDIED HISTORICALLY. 77 

in itself the ideas of Judge, Ruler, and Sustainer, while it 
includes much more beside, the " righteous Father." 

Did the limits of this work permit, we should be glad to 
trace the progress of Divine revelation as manifested in 
other aspects, particularly the gradual development of the 
doctrine of the Future Life ; but we must be content to 
have indicated its existence and general course. We com- 
mend the further study of it to the Sunday school teacher, 
both as interesting and instructive in itself, and as being 
the key to many of the Scripture difficulties which he will 
meet with in preparation for his class. 

3. Bible History. — To this end, if for no other reason, 
the teacher must study his Bible historically; and he will 
constantly find himself at a loss in teaching if he has not 
done so. He need not be prepared to give the exact date 
of every event in Scripture history. The exact chronology 
of some parts of the Bible is involved in considerable diffi- 
culties. # It will be enough for him to use the dates at the 
head of the columns of the newer reference Bibles as 
sufficiently accurate for his purpose. But he should have 
a general outline of Scripture history clearly fixed in his 
mind ; and should know at what points of the history the 
non-historical books (such as the prophets) fit in. Some 
information on the latter subject has already been given in 
the chapter on the Canon. We now subjoin a brief com- 
pendium, " a bird's eye view " of Jewish history which the 
student should master thoroughly. 

The patriarchs from whom the Jewish race descended 
came originally from the country east of the Euphrates, 
and after many wanderings in the land of Canaan, migrated 
to Egypt, where their descendants were enslaved by the 
kings of that country. Moses led them out about fifteen 
hundred years before Christ ; and after forty years' wander- 
ing in the wilderness, his successor, Joshua, brought them 
into the promised land. For some four hundred years 

* See Appendix, Note C. 



78 the bible: the Sunday school text-book. 

they struggled with the inhabitants of that country. 
During this period there was no central government ; but 
a succession of " Judges," or local chieftains, arising some- 
times in one tribe, sometimes in another, obtained a 
temporary leadership. The first king, Saul, about 1100 B.C. 
subjugated many of the hostile clans, and under his suc- 
cessors, David and Solomon, the whole of Palestine was 
won for the Jewish crown, and also a large extent of 
territory east of the Jordan, reaching almost to the 
Euphrates. In the reign of Rehoboam, the ten northern 
tribes revolted, and formed the kingdom of Israel ; the two 
southern tribes, Judah and Benjamin, remained united, 
and formed the kingdom of Judah. There were thus two 
lines of kings reigning at the same time. The two 
kingdoms were often at war with each other, and called in 
the surrounding nations to help them. The northern 
kingdom was larger but weaker than the southern. The 
kings' reigns were shorter, being frequently cut short by 
violence, and the throne transferred from one family to 
another. The kings were all more or less idolatrous, and 
about the year 720 B.C. the punishment often foretold came 
upon them from the Lord. They were conquered by the 
Assyrians, and a large number of them carried captive, 
leaving the southern portion of their territory (around 
Samaria) quite bare, so that it was afterwards repeopled 
by heathen. The reigns of the kings of Judah were longer 
and more peaceful. The throne continued in the line of 
David's descendants. Some of them made vigorous efforts 
to suppress idolatry, and they continued to reign for a hun- 
dred and thirty-five years after the northern kingdom had 
perished. But since they, too, proved in the end unfaithful, 
they brought upon themselves Divine judgment. The 
Babylonians, who had in the mean time conquered the 
Assyrians, invaded Judah, and in three successive inroads 
almost depopulated the land, though a remnant of the 
poorer sort of Jews were left behind (486 B.C.). After 



OUTLINE OF JEWISH HISTORY. 79 

seventy years the Babylonians (or Chaldees) were them- 
selves conquered by Cyrus the Persian, and this monarch 
gave permission to the Jewish exiles to return to their 
native land. A goodly number did so under the leadership 
of a prince named Zerubbabel, and bestirred themselves 
on their arrival to repeople the waste cities and rebuild 
the temple. But the work went on slowly till the arrival 
of Ezra, and twelve years later, of Nehemiah (444 B.C.). By 
Zerubbabel the temple, and by Nehemiah the walls of 
Jerusalem were rebuilt. By their united efforts the people 
were to a large extent purified from heathen alliances ; the 
law of the Lord, particularly as regards the Sabbath, was 
enforced ; and the priestly service re-instituted. Here the 
Old Testament history breaks off, about four hundred years 
before Christ. At this time Palestine was subject to Persia. 
But Persia with all her dominions was conquered by 
Alexander the Great, and in this way the Greek language 
and Greek influence spread over the Jewish colonies and 
penetrated the Holy Land itself. When the empire of 
Alexander was broken up, Syria and Egypt struggled for 
the possession of Palestine during a period of a hundred 
and forty years, in the course of which the Jews, led on by 
their high priests, achieved for a time their independence. 
When at last Rome became mistress of the world, Julius 
Caesar took away the government from the high priests and 
made Herod the Great (an Idumean or Edomite) king of 
the whole country. Subsequently Judaea and Samaria 
became part of the Roman province of Syria, and were 
governed by a Roman procurator resident at Caesarea, while 
Galilee was a little monarchy (or tetrarchy) owing allegi- 
ance to the Roman emperor, but governed independently 
by Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great. This was the 
state of things during the lifetime of our Lord. After his 
death Herod Agrippa (a grandson of Herod the Great) was 
allowed to reign for a short time over the whole of Palestine 
(Acts xii.). But afterwards Judaea and Samaria were 



80 THE BIBLE: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

again placed under procurators. In a.d. 66 the Jews, 
exasperated at their avarice, revolted against the Romans, 
and drove them out of the Holy Land altogether But 
the Roman emperors Vespasian and Titus took summary 
vengeance, ravaged the north of Palestine, and in a.d. 70 
utterly destroyed Jerusalem, and blotted the Jews (as a 
nation) out of existence. 

4. The Geography of Palestine and the neighbouring 
countries should be studied along with the history ; but for 
this subject we must refer the reader to some of the Sunday 
school manuals, where he can study it with the aid of maps. 

Similarly with regard to the Natural History of the 
Bible, the distinguishing features of the Jewish Sects, 
and the Manners and Customs of the people. A know- 
ledge of the last in particular is absolutely necessary to the 
understanding of almost every portion of the Bible. With- 
out it the Sunday school teacher will be liable to fall into 
even ludicrous mistakes in his exposition of the lesson, and 
will be unable to give it that vivid colouring which will 
-interest the children. One little book will supply him with 
abundant information on these and many other Biblical 
topics ; and whatever other book he lacks, he should 
procure a copy of the "Aids to Bible Students," printed 
by Eyre and Spottiswoode, and published by the Society 
for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, in a variety 
of types and binding, costing from one shilling upwards 
It is not to be confounded with the " Helps to the Study 
of the Bible," a similar but somewhat inferior work. The 
latter is bound up with the Oxford Bible, the former 
(which we recommend) with the Sunday School Teachers' 
"Variorum " Bible. 

5. As regards a Plan for the Study of Scripture, we 
would observe that the worst plan of all is to read the 
Bible straight through from Genesis to Revelation. This 
may be done after the separate portions of the book have 
been thoroughly studied on another plan ; but for many 



PLAN FOR STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 81 

reasons it is not the best to start with. It is best to take 
one book at a time, and fairly master its contents. Many 
things not noticed at a first reading will attract attention 
at a second or a third, and many points imperfectly under- 
stood at first will become clear on repernsal. Moreover, a 
better idea of the general aim and scope of the book will 
be obtained in this way, especially if, after studying it in 
sections, the student can find time to sit down and read 
through the whole at one sitting. This last remark applies 
most emphatically to the Prophecies and Epistles. If the 
student asks, " Where, then, shall I begin ? " we would 
reply with the Gospels. There would, indeed, be some 
advantage in studying the Old Testament first ; but life is 
short ; the revelation made in the person of Jesus Christ 
is of supreme importance, and, on the whole, we would 
recommend the student to begin with it. The study of 
the Gospels simultaneously in parallel passages present 
too many difficulties for the beginner. Let him be con- 
tent to take each separately, and, when he has become 
thoroughly familiar with the life, character, and teaching 
of Christ as there exhibited, let him go on to the Book of 
Acts, and learn how " the words of this life " took hold 
upon the world. Let him, then, take up the Epistles of 
Paul, and, before reading each, let him turn back to the 
Acts, and find out all he can about the people to whom it 
was written and Paul's connection with them. Then let 
him study the other Epistles. The Epistle to the Hebrews 
will make him eager to commence the study of the Old 
Testament, to which he may now turn. He has gained a 
clear idea of the great end to which God had been working 
for ages and generations, and may profitably trace the 
successive steps by which the Divine plan was accom- 
plished. He may read straight on in the order of our 
Bibles till he comes to the end of the Second Book of 
Kings. Then let him study the writings of those prophets 
who lived in the times of the kings in the following order : 

G 



82 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

Jonah, Joel, Amos, Hosea, Obadiah, Isaiah (i.-xxxix.), 
Mi cah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Zephaniah, Nahum, Hab- 
bakkuk. He will find here frequent references to the 
history in the Kings, and the parallel account in the 
Chronicles, which cover the same period, though written 
later. He should read this book before passing on to the 
prophets who wrote in the time of the exile : Isaiah 
(xl.-lxvi.), Ezekiel, and Daniel. Then the Book of Esther, 
the account of the return from exile in Ezra and Nehemiah, 
and, last, the prophets who lived after the return — Haggai, 
Zechariah, and Malachi. It is assumed that the Book of 
Psalms will be read as a book of devotion simultaneously 
with this more systematic study of Scripture; and the 
books not yet mentioned may be taken up after it is con- 
cluded, viz. Job, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, 
and Revelation, all of which are comparatively inde- 
pendent of the history, and may be equally well understood 
without reference to it, while certain difficulties of inter- 
pretation make them fitter objects for later study. If 
time can be spared both for a morning and an evening 
reading, the study of the two Testaments, according to 
the above plan, may be carried forward together with 
great advantage. 

6. A few hints on the Preparation of the Lesson, 
though scarcely falling within the scope of this book, may 
not be unacceptable. The teacher will probably follow 
the International series. If left to select his own lesson, 
we would advise him in general to choose some narrative. 
especially if his scholars are young and his own experience 
of teaching slight. Doctrinal and topical lessons are 
better suited for old classes, and require more judgment 
and ability to make them interesting. We presume that 
the teacher is furnished with some external aid, such, as is 
now so abundantly supplied for the "lesson for the day" 
in the Sunday School Chronicle and similar publications. 
But we would strongly urge him, before looking at it, to 



PREPARING THE LESSON. 83 

study the passage, with prayer for Divine assistance, by 
himself. If he understands the general drift of it, let him 
not even open a commentary or book of reference, but ask 
himself first, " Now, what does this passage teach me ? 
What feature of Christ's character or God's government 
does it bring out ? What sin does it w r arn against, or 
what virtue does it inculcate, or what duty does it set 
before me ? " If he will patiently read and think, some one 
point will probably emerge and fasten his attention. He 
will feel, u Now, this is the truth that comes out in the 
passage, and I must make the children see it as I see it, 
and feel it as I feel it." If the teacher always leans on the 
crutches of commentary and lesson ontline to give him his 
first idea, his mind will grow lame and impotent. He will 
best cultivate its powers by using them first independently, 
to draw out of Holy Writ the meaning God has put 
there ; and he will put the point of the lesson with much 
greater freshness and vigour to his children, if it is some- 
thing which he has thought out for himself and not 
picked up out of a book. Then let him set to work to see 
that he understands not only the general drift, but every 
portion of the lesson. Are there any words in the lesson 
that will need explaining to the children ? Are there any 
'places whose situation must be described to them ? Are 
these places mentioned elsewhere in Holy Writ ? Have 
there been events connected with them (either in the 
Bible or out of it) which might be briefly referred to in a 
way to interest the children or might be drawn from 
them by questions ? Similarly with regard to persons 
mentioned in the narrative. Who are they ? What are 
their antecedents ? How came they to be there ? This 
will most likely lead him to study the connection in which 
the passage stands, a matter which should always receive 
attention. Let him further note whether there are any 
allusions to oriental modes of life which the children will 
not understand without explanation. In gathering this 



84 the bible: the Sunday school text- book. 

information, the teacher will be glad to consult his Sunday 
School Chronicle and other books of reference, and in so 
doing may get some further suggestions. Having now 
amassed his material, let him draw out the plan of his 
lesson. Various lesson-plans are given in teachers' 
manuals. The plan should be varied frequently. The most 
natural and serviceable for common use is as follows : — 

(i.) Introduction, which may take the form of the 
historical connection between the present and the last 
lesson, or of some question or anecdote leading up to and 
awakening interest in the subject of the day. 

(ii.) Reading of the passage, with needful explanations, 
and illustration of subordinate points. 

(iii.) Bringing out tbe main point of the lesson, if pos- 
sible, from the scholars themselves by means of questions. 

(iv.) Enforcement of the same by illustration and appeal. 

(v.) Questioning on what has been taught. 

The teacher should remember, when seeking for illustra- 
tions, that the Bible itself is a repertory of moral and 
religious anecdote. The less-read portions of Scripture 
history, such as the Book of Judges, second Book of 
Kings, the Books of Esther and Nehemiah, are full of 
striking life- pictures, which will be new to the scholars, 
and from which illustrations may be drawn for a great 
variety of subjects. If the lesson for the day be not 
itself a portion of Scripture narrative, but on some special 
topic or doctrine, it is all the more desirable that the 
illustration should be drawn from the sacred page itself. 
It will be seen that we have taken for granted that there 
will be always some main point, some central truth which 
the teacher means to make the lesson of the day, and on 
which he will concentrate his powers. Occasionally there 
will be two, or even three, which seem equally important ; 
but, as a rule, the most effective teaching is that which 
aims at producing one solid impression, driving one truth 
home at each lesson. This method has further the 



SCRIPTURE DIFFICULTIES. 85 

advantage of giving graphic variety to the teaching as a 
whole , whereas, if the teacher allows himself to wander 
over a number of points, morals, and maxims at each 
lesson, some of these necessarily recurring again and again 
will leave on the class an impression that " Teacher's 
lessons are all alike. He is always saying the same thing.'' 
We have only to add, that when in a course of lessons a 
fresh book of scripture is commenced, the teacher should 
read the whole through himself, that he may see what is 
coming, observe what passages in the book are best 
adapted to enforce certain truths, and, having these in his 
mind, be on the look out for any illustrations that may 
present themselves in his general reading or daily life, and 
jot them down in his note-book or blank-leaved Bible. If 
he is teaching a fairly advanced class, he should at the 
first lesson tell them all he knows about the date and the 
author of the book, and give them some idea of its general 
scope and purpose. 

7. Scripture Difficulties. — No wise teacher will start 
difficulties in his class, but he should be prepared to solve 
them when presented by his scholars. Moreover, even 
should his scholars not bring them up in class, the 
consciousness of them in his own mind (if he does not see 
his way through them) will hamper his freedom, and 
impair his pleasure and efficiency in teaching. 

(i ) Some minds find a difficulty in believing in miracles 
at all. The subject is too wide to be discussed in these 
pages. We can only refer the reader who desires to go 
into it to standard works on the subject, such as Canon 
Mozley's " Bampton Lecture," Trench's " Notes on the 
Miracles of our Lord" (Preliminary Essay), Bushnell's 
"Nature and the Supernatural," etc. 

(ii.) There is sometimes a difficulty in reconciling two 
statements of fact in different parts of the sacred record ; 
e.g. Matthew mentions the healing of two blind men as 
Christ was leaving Jericho ; Mark mentions only one ; 



86 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

Luke mentions only one, and that one as being healed by 
Christ when lie was entering the town. Now, upon th.'s 
and all similar discrepancies of fact we would observe, 
first, that a perfectly complete knowledge of all the 
circumstances might enable us to harmonize the two 
accounts perfectly. We might, for instance, find that, 
though there were indeed two blind men, one of them, 
Bartimeus, was throughout the leader and spokesman ; 
Mark, in reporting his case, reported all that seemed to him 
necessary ; further, that the cure took place after Christ 
had been some time in the town, somewhere in the out- 
skirts, when Christ was about to re-enter the town and pass 
through it on his way to some other place. If this were 
so it might be said to be " as he was entering Jericho " or 
"as he was leaving Jericho," according as the writer 
regarded the immediate direction of Christ's steps, or his 
purpose of immediately departing from the town. We do 
not say it was so (other explanations have been suggested), 
but it shows how a fuller knowledge might remove all 
difficulty. The records are only fragmentary : each writer 
gives the account from his own point of view ; and this 
leads us to observe, secondly, that such apparent con- 
tradictions almost invariably occur whenever a number of 
thoroughly independent witnesses report an event that 
they have witnessed in common : one saw something that 
the other did not, or saw the same thing from a different 
point. Now, if we can have the witnesses before us and 
question them, we can generally unravel the difficulty and 
bring the accounts into perfect agreement. Where this 
cannot be done (as of course it cannot in the case of the 
evangelists) it would still be highly unreasonable to discard 
their concurrent testimony to the main facts as worthless 
because of some apparent contradictions in minor details. 
The present writer has in his possession four accounts of 
the assassination of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II., by 
the explosion of a bomb beneath his carriage in the streets 



SCRIPTURE DIFFICULTIES. 87 

of St. Petersburg on Sunday, March 13, 1881. They were 
transmitted direct from the spot, two of them by eye- 
witnesses. They contain more and graver discrepancies 
than those to be found among our evangelists concerning 
any event which they relate in common. Some of them 
were reconciled in subsequent reports, some of them remain 
unreconciled to this day. The four accounts were published 
in the daily papers, and we venture to say that not one 
person of the thousands who read them ever doubted for 
a moment that the Czar had been assassinated by the 
explosion of a bomb beneath his carriage on that memorable 
Sunday. Hence the Bible student, even when unable to 
reconcile these small differences in the record, may rest 
with unimpaired confidence in its veracity. These 
differences show that we have the testimony of really 
independent witnesses. Had there been absolute and 
perfect agreement in all details, it would have afforded 
some ground for the suspicion either that three of the 
evangelists had simply copied from the fourth; or that 
they had all agreed together to concoct the same story. 

(iii.) It sometimes appears as though the doctrine of 
Scripture in one place disagreed with the doctrine in 
another. Where it is a passage from the Old Testament as 
compared with the New, it will generally be found that the 
latter really includes the former, enlarges and goes beyond 
it, as in the instances already given (§2) from Christ's 
Sermon on the Mount ; that it is, in fact, an instance of the 
progress of Divine revelation. In other cases it will be 
discovered that the passages really refer to different things, 
though both are called by the same name. Thus, when 
Paul says a man is saved by faith without works, he means 
by faith, loyal trust in the Redeemer. When James says a 
man is not saved by faith without works, and that " faith 
without works is dead being alone," lie means by faith 
mere intellectual assent to the truths of the gospel. Again, 
when Paul speaks of " works," he is thinking chiefly of the 



88 the bible: the Sunday school text-book. 

rites and formal service of the law. But James means by 
works the deeds of a holy life. The " works " of James 
will inevitably follow from the " faith " of Paul. They 
are the fruit and the sign of it ; but faith as being the 
root is put forward by Paul as the means of salvation. So 
Paul's doctrine and James' doctrine are reconciled in the 
paradox, " A man is saved by faith without works, but, a 
man is not saved by the faith that is without works,'' 
because that is not true faith at all. Mistranslation is 
often the cause of apparent contradictions, as of some 
other kinds of Scripture difficulties. A good commentary 
will generally supply the needful correction. 

(iv.) The bad actions of good men in Scripture constitute 
another common difficulty Some people seem to think 
that because certain men are in general terms described as 
righteous and approved of God, therefore everything that 
they did ought to be right. But this is a serious error. 
There is no ground for such a supposition. It would be 
most unnatural if it were so. Human nature in its main 
features continues the same in all ages ; and as there is a 
leaven of evil even in the best men now, so it was in the 
days of Scripture history. The fact that the evil is there 
plainly recorded shows how impartial the record is, and 
(as we have already pointed out) indicates Divine guidance 
in the composition of it. But perhaps it will be urged 
that some of the deeds of good men are so very bad ; that 
David is called "the man after God's own heart," and yet 
he is guilty of murder, adultery, and horrible cruelty to 
his vanquished foes. Now, upon this we observe, first, 
that the men of that primitive and half -barbarous age 
must not be judged by the high standard of morality 
which Christ set up ; secondly, that David is not called 
the man after God's own heart, but simply a man after 
God's own heart, i.e. in comparison with Saul, who proved 
utterly faithless and rebellious. It is never even implied 
that he was the man who most fully came up to the Divine 



SCRIPTURE DIFFICULTIES. 89 

ideal ; on the contrary, his murder and adultery drew 
on him God's emphatic condemnation and most severe 
punishment; and "because he had been a man of blood " 
he was not allowed to build a temple to the Lord. 

(v.) But it will still further be urged, perhaps, that some 
evil things were done with Divine approval and even by 
Divine command : such as the extermination of the 
Canaanites, the treacherous murder of Sisera, the slaughter 
of Saul's sons, etc. Now, we admit the difficulty, but 
remind the student, first, in general that we are not 
competent to sit in judgment on all the Divine actions ; 
secondly, that this is peculiarly the case with reference to 
times and circumstances so remote from our own, and such 
vast problems as are involved in the condemnation of sinful 
nations and the setting up of a people through whom the 
whole world was to be benefited ; thirdly, that if we find 
in the course of nature a whole population decimated or 
even swept away by pestilence and famine, including many 
comparatively innocent persons, it is no greater difficulty if, 
by direction of the Author of Nature, the entire population 
of some of the Canaanite cities was cut off by the sword of 
Israel ; and then, fourthly, we are not always certain how r 
far the prophets really understood the mind of God when 
they spoke of Him as commanding certain things. In 
many cases we know the Divine will was ascertained by 
the casting of lots or some similar process, and it is fairly 
open to question whether this was a legitimate way of 
seeking direction, whether the response elicited was really 
a declaration of the will of God. We cannot enlarge on 
these points, but commend them to the thoughtful 
consideration of the teacher who is troubled by this class 
of difficulties. We also ask him to bear in mind what we 
have said in a former section of this chapter about the 
progressive character of Divine revelation. That alone 
will remove the difficulty which he must feel in reading — 
(vi.) The Imprecatory Psalms: such as Psa. cix. Wo doubt 



90 THE BIBLE: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

the language here employed concerning the psalmist's 
enemies is vindictive to the last degree. Our mind and 
conscience, educated under the influence of the gospel, 
recoils from it. It does not help us, to be told that the 
psalmist's enemies were also the enemies of the Lord ; for 
we could not use such language with reference to the 
wickedest man we ever knew. What we have to remember 
is, that the Psalm was written nearly three thousand years 
ago, by a member of that nation which God was gradually 
disciplining in holiness. He could not teach them every- 
thing at once. He taught them to love righteousness and 
hate iniquity. He trained them in the sterner virtues first. 
The tenderer sentiments were to be inculcated afterwards. 
It was reserved for His Son to teach how we were to love our 
enemies, do good to those that hate us, and pray for them that 
despitefully use us and persecute us. The ancient Jews 
were not ripe for that lesson. Even we do not find it an 
easy one. We do not find it easy to hate sin, yet pity and 
even love the sinner. To the mind of the psalmist the two 
would appear incompatible. In his vehement indignation 
against his enemies who broke the law of God and perse- 
cuted him because he was the servant of God, he found 
himself unable to separate between the sinner and his sin. 
In his righteous wrath against the man's evil deeds, he 
included the doer of them, and cursed both together. It 
should also be remembered that, according to the Oriental 
style of declamation, the maledictions pronounced on the 
progenitors and descendants of his enemy are not to be 
interpreted with the strict literalness which we should 
apply to a European composition. If it be asked, What 
then becomes of the Inspiration of the Psalm ? we reply, 
It is indeed inconceivable that God in a mechanical way 
made the pen of the psalmist write these words, but the. 
real inspiration, the working of God's Spirit in the writer's 
heart, is clearly visible, both in his righteous indignation 
asrainst sin, and in the sublime confidence with which in 



SCRIPTURE DIFFICULTIES. 91 

the closing verses he commits his cause to the righteous 
God — the loving trustfulness with which, helpless and 
oppressed, he casts himself with all his cares into the 
Everlasting Arms. We have purposely taken this psalm 
as the strongest example of its class, and we may recognize 
the Divine wisdom that has included them in the inspired 
volume, in order that we may see how by gradual steps 
God has led our race onwards, how " the glory " of the 
new covenant " excelleth " that of the old, how " the least in 
the kingdom of Christ " is in point of enlightenment and 
fulness of revelation greater than the greatest of the Old 
Testament prophets. 

(vii ) The same two considerations which have helped 
us through the last difficulty, will help us through the next. 
We find in the Old Testament, descriptions of God, which 
make us wonder. Sometimes God is spoken of as though 
possessed with the bodily attributes of humanity, some- 
times as the subject of human emotions, passions, and in- 
firmities. (The former mode of speech is technically 
termed anthropomorphism, from anthropos,msm, and morphos, 
form ; the latter, anthropopathism, from pathos, feeling or 
suffering.) Thus we read of Him as having "back parts " 
and " front parts," as " coming down " to view the sons of 
men ; again, as being " grieved at the heart ; " as being 
"filled with fury " and " coming out of His place to take 
vengeance," and anon as " repenting Himself." This lan- 
guage is found almost exclusively in the Old Testament. 
It is to be attributed partly to the fact, already mentioned, 
that the earlier conceptions of God were really lower than 
those we now have of Him ; partly to the style of oriental 
imagery, which employed bolder figures of speech than 
those which a European writer w 7 ould adopt. Thus when 
we read, " He rode upon a cherub and did fly, yea He did 
fly upon the wings of the wind," this is evidently only a 
poetic description of the power of God manifested in the 
thunder-cloud and the storm ; or when we read, " He shall 



92 THE BIBLE! THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

cover tliee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt 
thou trust/' we have the fostering care of God compared 
to the brooding of a bird over her young — the very figure 
afterwards employed by Christ Himself, " Even as a hen 
gathereth her chickens under her wings," etc. ISTor are we 
to discard as false or meaningless those other expressions 
which attribute human passions to the Deity. They are not 
literally correct, but they convey truth in a manner adapted 
to the minds of those to whom they were originally ad- 
dressed. Thus, when God is spoken of as repenting and 
changing His mind, it means that the subsequent acts of 
His providence were such as, if they had proceeded from a 
man, would indicate a change of mind. So when he deposed 
Saul and chose David as his successor, it is said, " God 
repented that He had made him king." But there was no 
real change of purpose. God had from the first determined 
to give the people a king after their own heart, and then 
a king after His own heart. The real unchangeableness 
of the Divine character is attested even in the adjacent 
chapter, where Samuel says to Saul, " God is not a man that 
he should lie, nor the Son of man that he should repent." 

(viii.) A difficulty has sometimes been felt in the occur- 
rence of passages which offend our delicacy of taste, and 
which we could hardly read out before any general assembly. 
Here, again, we must remember the different condition of 
the people for whom they were first written. They were 
much less refined, and what offends our ears would not offend 
theirs. Further, as regards the plain language in which 
some sins are described, let us remember that such plain 
language is needed for some people, and that sin is too 
serious and awful a matter to be allowed to escape rebuke 
for fear of wounding fastidious sensibilities. Also let it 
be borne in mind that it is nowhere said or implied that 
the whole of the Bible was ever intended to be read in 
public. It has been well remarked that " the topics of the 
Bible, however painful occasionally, require no apology if 



SCRIPTURE DIFFICULTIES. 93 

they are not wantonly intruded on a promiscuous audience. 
If the book is to speak to every man as well as to all men 
it must sometimes talk with us as a parent with his child, 
as a guardian with his ward, as a friend with an erring 
brother, as a kind physician with his patient : that is, in 
confidential secrecy. As we are commanded to enter into 
our chamber for private prayer, and not stand at the 
corners of streets : so the Bible, which is to be ' the man of 
our counsel,' will have some things which are intended not 
for the pulpit or the class-room, but for our ear alone." 

We believe that most Scripture difficulties will come 
under one or other of the above classes We trust some 
light has been thrown upon them. We do not profess to 
have fully explained them. So with passages difficult of 
interpretation. The student may get some help from com- 
mentaries, but he need not be surprised if some things 
remain inexplicable. It need not for a moment shake his 
faith in the Divine origin of the Bible. Bishop Butler 
pointed out long ago, if the Bible be a revelation from 
God, it will probably contain things too deep for us to 
understand ; just as the book of nature does. That, too, is 
a revelation of God : it points unmistakably to a mighty 
wise and benevolent Being as its author, yet it contains 
many things hard to reconcile with His wisdom and 
benevolence. We are content to leave those problems 
only partially solved, saying, " God is great, I know Him 
not." If the Bible be another revelation from God, it 
need not surprise us if we are sometimes obliged to say 
the same concerning the difficulties that meet us there. 

BOOKS FOR REFERENCE AND FURTHER STUDY. 
General. 

" Harmony of the Four Gospels," based on Robinson. (With valuable 
notes.) Religious Tract Society. 75 cts. 

"Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament," by T. D. Bernard. 
Carters. 75 c. 



94 THE BIBLE I THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

"Normal Class Manual for Bible Teachers," by Alvah Hovey, D.D., 
and J. M. Gregory, LL.D. Bible and Publication Society. 
" Preparing to Teach," by various authors. Presbyterian Board. $1.75. 
" Help to the Reading of the Bible," by Nichols. New Edition, $1.00. 
" Bible Scholar's Manual," by B. K. Pierce, D.D. 50 cts. 

On Eastern Geography and Customs. 

" Manual of Bible Geography. A Text Book on Bible History," con- 
taining Maps, Plans, Review Charts, &c, by J. L. Hurlbut, D.D. Rand, 
McNally & Co. $4.50. (Specially valuable to teachers.) 

Stanley's " Sinai and Palestine," (for advanced students.) Carters. 
$2.50. 

" The Land and the Book," by Dr. Wm. Thompson. 2 vols., $6.00. 

Kitto's " Daily Bible Illustrations." 8 vols. May be had separately. 
Carters. $1.25 each. 

" Chautauqua Text-Books," No. 26. "The Tabernacle," No. 28. 
" Manners and Customs of Bible Times." 10 cts each. 

On Scripture History. 

" Class-book of Old Testament History," by Dr. Maclear. Macmillan. 
$1.10. 

" Class-book of New Testament History," including connection of Old 
and New Testaments. Macmillan. $1.10. 

" Students' Old Testament and New Testament History." (Similar 
books to the above, but more advanced.) Edited by Dr. William Smith. 
$1.20 each. 

" Outline of Bible History." J. F. Hurst, D.D. 50 cts. 

" Chronology of Bible History." C. Munger. 50 cts. 

On Scripture Difficulties. 

" Can we believe in Miracles ? " by G. Warrington. 60 cts. 
"Reasons for Believing in Christianity," by C. A. Row. Thomas 
Whittaker. 75 cts. 
Haley's "Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible." Draper.* 



* For any books mentioned in these lists, send orders to the Congrega- 
tional Sunday School and Publishing Society, corner Beacon and 
Somerset Streets, Boston. 



( »S ) 



CHAPTER V. 

ON THE MEANS OF RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE, 
UNDER THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS, WITH EXAMPLES. 

To the thoughtful teacher the question must often have; 
occurred, " How were the people, and, in particular, how 
were the children, instructed in Divine truth in the days 
when there were no Sunday schools, no churches, and 
little or no religious literature ? " or, to put the question in 
other words, By what means were religious knowledge and 
religious life maintained and diffused during the period 
covered by the Old and New Testaments ? We shall 
endeavour to answer that question in this chapter. The 
sources of information are scanty ; but there are many 
suggestive items scattered up and down the Scriptures, 
which, when brought together and supplemented from 
other quarters, give us a tolerably complete view of the 
subject before us. 

1. Parental Instruction. — This is the oldest, the most 
natural, the most general, and may be made the most 
efficient means of communicating religious knowledge, and 
instilling religious principle. No institutions, however 
useful, however sacred, can take the place of a fathers 
voice and a mother's influence. Throughout the Bible 
especial stress is laid upon this mode of religious instruc- 
tion. The God who calls Himself " our Father," and who 
in His successive revelations to mankind, has all along 
enforced and continually elevated the sanctity of domestic 



96 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

life, makes the religious instruction of children a parent's 
first duty. In the time of the patriarchs, the parent was 
the sole human teacher. It is true we read of a certain 
Melchizedek, who is called the " priest of the most high 
God," and who blessed Abraham when returning from his 
victory over the confederate kings (Gen. xiv.) ; but his 
intercourse with the patriarch appears to have been casual, 
and we have no reason to believe that he discharged the 
functions of a teacher. The father was at once prophet, 
priest, and king in his own household ; and whatever 
instruction the later patriarchs gained, beyond that which 
was communicated to them directly by God, must have 
been derived from their father Abraham. One of the 
most touching scenes in the Book of Genesis is where the 
dying patriarch Jacob gathers his children and grand- 
children round his bed, to bestow on them his blessing, to 
speak to them of their father's God, and tell them what 
shall be to them in the latter days (Gen. xlviii., xlix.). 

When the law was given by Moses, it contained, on the 
one hand, special injunctions to children to honour and 
obey their parents, and, on the other, special injunctions to 
parents to teach their children the ways of the Lord. The 
Book of the Law was indeed written and laid up in the 
side of the Ark, but the transmission of its precepts was 
intrusted chiefly to the devout memories of the people, and 
the sacred obligations of the parent to his children.* 
" Therefore shall ye lay up these My words in your heart 
and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your 
hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes. 

* It should be borne in mind that the powers of memory are 
much weakened in modern times by continual resort to the aid of 
writing. Eelying upon books to preserve the information we require, 
the memory is comparatively little exercised. In ancient times 
long poems and treatises were preserved in the memory, and handed 
down from generation to generation. We know it was so with the 
poems of Homer, with the early lyric poems of Britain and Scandi- 
navia, and so, doubtless, it was with many passages of the law. 



PARENTAL INSTRUCTION. 97 

And ye shall teach them jour children, speaking of them 
when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest 
by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest 
up. And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thy 
house, and upon thy gates " (Deut. xi. 18-20. Gf. iv. 9, 10, 
and vi. 7). 

No doubt parents did not all discharge this duty 
with like faithfulness, but there are many interesting 
instances of its fulfilment. If Eli and Samuel were 
wanting in this respect, David, at least in the case of 
Solomon, appears to have done all that a parent could to 
instruct and train him aright. Worth pondering are his 
words, "And thou, Solomon my son, know thou the God 
of thy father, and serve Him with a perfect heart and with 
a willing mind : for the Lord senrcheth all hearts, and 
understandeth all imaginations of the thoughts : if thou 
seek Him, he will be found of thee ; but if thou forsake 
Him, he will cast thee off for ever" (1 Chron. xxviii. 9). 
Interesting, too, is the reference to a mother's teaching in 
the preface to Prov. xxxi. : " The words of King Lemuel, 
the prophecy that his mother taught him." In that book, 
as well as in the Psalms and the prophets, there is frequent 
allusion to the duty of parental instruction. " The father 
to the children shall make known Thy truth " (Isa. xxxviii. 
19), is an injunction that recurs in many forms. Fresh 
emphasis was laid upon this duty after the return from the 
captivity, when the heathen marriages of many of the 
people had tended to the neglect of it. In the uncanonical 
literature between the close of the Old Testament and the 
coining of Christ, we read that it was a father's first duty 
to make his son " know the law." The Talmud, despite 
many slighting remarks upon woman, says, " He is best 
taught who has first learned from his mother." But the 
duty of instructing the child in the law was laid chiefly on 
the father. " Blessed," said the rabbis, " is the son who 
has studied with his father \ and blessed is the father who 

H 



98 the bible: the Sunday school text-book. 

has taught his son." Josephus says, " Oar honour and the 
highest end of life is the education of our children, and 
i he observance of the law." 

Our blessed Lord himself probably received His first 
religious instruction from the lips of Joseph and Mary. 
The apostles Paul and Peter are alike emphatic in their 
injunction to parents to " bring up their children in the 
nurture and admonition of the Lord." And as this is the 
earliest form of instruction mentioned in the Scriptures, so 
it is the latest of which we have any special example, viz. 
in the case of Timothy, whose father was a Greek, but 
whose "mother was a Jewess and believed." To him 
Paul's last letter was addressed, and there we find that 
from a child he bad known the Holy Scriptures, and when 
we read in the same Epistle of " the unfeigned faith which 
had dwelt first in his grandmother Lois, and then in his 
mother Eunice," we are in no doubt as to who had led him 
to the knowledge of them (2 Tim. i. 5 ; iii. 14, 15 ; com- 
pare Acts xvi. 1). 

2. Instruction by Rites and Symbols.— We have 
already (Chap. IV.) called attention to the fact that the 
Jewish Ritual was a kind of pictorial instruction in 
religious truth. , This form of instruction may be traced 
back beyond the time of Moses to the patriarchal sacrifices. 
They were not simply an expression of devotion on the 
part of him who offered them, but also a religious educa- 
tion for those who witnessed them. When the children 
of the patriarch saw the best of the flock and the herd 
sirgled out to be offered to the Lord, the lesson was im- 
pressed upon them that God must ever be served with the 
best. When they beheld the struggles and heard the cries 
of the victim, they were early taught to associate sin with 
suffering ; that " without shedding of blood is no remis- 
sion." Or if the sacrifice were not expiatory, but a thank 
offering, they were thereby reminded that all their posses- 
sions came to them from God, and that a grateful acknow- 



INSTRUCTION BY RITES AND SYMBOLS. 99 

ledgment was due to Hira. This symbolic method of 
instruction was continued and largely developed under the 
Mosaic dispensation. The sacrifices were classified and 
systematized, and a special set of men set apart to offer 
them. Besides the sacrifices, an elaborate ritual, and a code 
of ceremonial law were provided, which, while in part 
determined by sanitary considerations, were intended to be 
morally and spiritually significant. These laws relating to 
uncleanness, the white raiment of the priests, the inscrip- 
tion on the high priest's mitre, the constant ablutions, the 
very structure of the sanctuary itself, with its holy place, 
and its holy of holies, were all so many pictorial lessons on 
the necessity of purity and holiness. It was God saying 
over and over again in many forms, " Be ye holy, for I am 
holy." Many special ceremonies in the Mosaic ritual, such 
as the anointing with the blood, the observance of the day 
of atonement, the scapegoat, etc., were designed to impress 
the same lesson, and to hint at other important truths 
which were to be further developed in the progress of 
Divine revelation. 

The three great annual feasts of the Passover, the " First 
fruits" (or Pentecost), and the "Ingathering" (or 
Tabernacles), were also a means of instruction. The two 
latter, at the seasons of the harvest and the vintage, were 
a constant reminder to the people that " the earth is the 
Lord's and the fulness thereof." The last was also com- 
memorative of a great epoch in the nation's history, and 
the first of the three still more markedly called to mind 
God's deliverance of the people. In connection with the 
feast of the passover this injunction was given, " It shall 
come to pass when your children shall say unto you, 
4 What mean ye by this service ? ' that ye shall say, ' It is 
the sacrifice of the Lord's passover, who passed over the 
houses of the children of Israel in Egypt when He smote 
the Egyptians, and delivered our houses.' And thou shalt 
show thy sou. in that day, saying, ' This is done because of 



100 THE BIBLE: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

that which the Lord did unto me when I came forth out 
of Egypt'" (Ex. xii. 26, 27; xiii. 8). It is true that 
these great feasts were celebrated with their full ritual 
only in the city of Jerusalem ; but all the male Israelites 
were directed to come up thither, and they would return 
to their homes, and tell their children what they had heard 
and seen. 

The institution of the Sabbath scarcely comes under the 
head of " instruction by rite and symbol," nor does it 
appear that any distinct provision was made for Sabbath 
worship till the time of the kings or later. But if the 
day was to be observed as " holy to the Lord," it is probable 
that some portion of it would be spent in exercises of 
devotion ; and the mere setting apart of the day, week by 
week, inculcated this two-fold lesson : (1) Time is the 
Lord's : it is not to be wholly consumed in selfish ends ; 
(2) Thou shalfc care for thy manservant and maidservant, 
and even for thine ox and thine ass, and afford them 
needful rest. 

3. Public Reading of the Scriptures. — To what 
extent this was done in connection with the ordinary 
temple service we are not informed. But in Deut. xxxi. 
9-13, we have a very express direction on the subject. 
"And Moses wrote this law and delivered it unto the 
priests, the sons of Levi, . . . and unto all the elders of 
Israel. And Moses commanded them saying, At the end 
of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year of 
release, in the feast of tabernacles, when all Israel is come 
to appear before the Lord thy God in the place which He 
shall choose, thou shalt read this law before Israel in their 
hearing, (lather the people together, men, and women, 
and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, 
that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the 
Lord your God, and observe to do all the words of this 
law : and that thy children, which have not known any- 
thing may hear, and learn to fear the Lord your God." 



PUBLIC READING OF THE SCRIPTURES. 101 

We may infer from several passages in the later writings 
that this ordinance was not always faithfully observed. 
In fact, under the degenerate kings of the last period 
preceding the captivity, there was such neglect of the law 
that even the temple copy of it appears to have been lost. 
We read (2 Ohron. xxxiv. 14-33) how it was found by 
Hilkiah the priest, and carried to the king Josiah, who 
had it read before him, and was greatly distressed to find 
how its precepts had been neglected and transgressed. 
" And the king went up into the house of the Lord, . . . 
and the priests and Levites and all the people, great and 
small, and he read in their ears all the words of the book 
of the covenant that was found in the house of the Lord. 
And the king made a covenant before the Lord, . . . and 
caused all that were present to stand to it." A still more 
interesting instance of the Public Reading of the Scriptures 
in express fulfilment of the injunction of Deuteronomy, is 
found in the Book of Nehemiah. After the return from 
the captivity, when Ezra and Nehemiah were labouring to 
restore the worship and service of God, they summoned 
the people to a grand observance of the feast of tabernacles. 
" And all the people gathered themselves together as one 
man into the street that was before the water gate." 
There Ezra, from his " pulpit of wood," with the assistance 
of priests and Levites, read and expounded the law from 
early morning unto midday. " So they read in the book 
of the law of God distinctly and gave the sense, and 
caused them to understand the reading." (The teacher 
should study the whole of this interesting chapter, 1ST eh. viii.). 
When the synagogues were established (of which more 
hereafter) the reading of the law and the prophets formed 
a part of every service. 'Nov must we pass over the 
instructive passage which refers to an earlier period in the 
reign of Jehoshaphat, where we read that " his heart was 
lifted up in the ways of the Lord ; and he sent to his 
princes ... to teach in the cities of Judah 3 . # , and with 



L02 the bible: the Sunday school text-book. 

them he sent Levites and priest ; and they had the hook of 
the law of the Lord with them, and went about throughout 
all the cities of Judah, and taught the people " (2 Chron. 
xvii. 7-9). 

4. Instruction by Teachers divinely commissioned. 
The Prophets. — A prophet is not necessarily one who 
foretells future events. The word, according to its 
etymology, means one who " speaks forth " (to the people), 
one who speaks out (publicly) ; and in many passages of 
Scripture " prophesying " is simply equivalent to preach- 
ing. It is always implied that the prophet spoke by a 
Divine impulse. Whether he uttered predictions of the 
future, or exhortations bearing on the present, it was the 
spirit of God working within him that moved him to speak. 
The Hebrew word for prophet comes from a root which 
signifies bubbling up — gushing forth. A still older name 
for the prophet was the " seer " (1 Sam. ix. 9), i.e. "one 
who sees," not simply visions and future occurrences, but 
one who sees God's meaning in the events of Providence, 
one who sees into the counsels and purposes of the Divine 
mind. Thus the prophets were the divinely commissioned 
teachers of the Jewish nation, and it is in this aspect that 
we have to regard them in this chapter. Sometimes they 
were sent with a special message to individuals, sometimes 
with more general instruction to the people at large. 
Moses the first, and in many respects the greatest, of the 
prophets, appears before us in the more public capacity. 
His instruction was for all the people. Nathan and Gad, 
on the other hand, are mentioned in connection with 
private instruction, in particular with the rebuke and 
warning given to David after the two great sins of his life 
(2 Sam. xii., xxiv.) ; and so with some other prophets 
who appear just once on the sacred page with their special 
message to a special person, and after that are heard of no 
more. More frequently the same prophets appear in 
both capacities. Thus Samuel has much private instruction 



THE PROPHETS AS TEACHERS. 103 

for Saul separately,* but he also harangues the people 
at large f In like manner Elijah and Isaiah are sent to 
their respective kings, Ahab and Hezekiah, with special 
messages from the Lord, but they also speak in the ears of 
all the people. J It may also be pointed out that these special 
messages to the kings had a bearing on the religious 
instruction of the people. When the king was induced 
by the prophet to put down idolatrous worship, and to 
restore the worship of Jehovah, it was the people who 
were instructed through the monarch. The later prophets 
generally appear to have delivered their message publicly, 
and afterwards to have written it down, either with their 
own hand or by the hand of their disciples. The thirty-sixth 
chapter of Jeremiah contains an interesting account of 
how Baruch wrote down the words of Jeremiah at his 
dictation (see especially vers. 17, 18), and took the book 
and read it in the ears of the people, " at the entry of the 
new gate of the Lord's house." 

The teaching of the prophets was in part concerned 
with future events, and distant nations ; it was in part 
political, warning the kings against unwise alliances and 
treacherous advisers ; but a large portion of it was 
personal and practical, directed against such evils as 
drunkenness, adultery, fornication, undue accumulation of 
wealth, extortion and oppression, vanity in dress, luxurious 
self-indulgence, etc., exhorting to repentance, promising 
forgiveness, and continually denouncing all apostasy from 
the Lord, and assuring the people that He would be ever 
faithful to those who loyally trusted Him. Such plain 
teaching roused up many enemies against them, but in 
spite of this their influence was great, and by means of 

* 1 Sam. ix. 25-27; xiii. 10-Uj xv. 13-31. 

t 1 Sam. x. 24, 25 ; xii. 1-25. 

% Compare 1 Kings xvii. 1, xviii. 1, xxi. 17-24, with xviii. 21, etc. ; 
and Isa. xxxvii. 21, xxxviii. 1, xxxix. 3-7, with Isa. i. 10 j xL 1, li. 1, 
\v. 1, etc. : prophecies evidently addressed to all the people. 



104 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

their writings it extended over a wider circle than they 
could reach with their lips. 

5. Schools of the Prophets. — These institutions 
deserve separate notice. Their origin is to be traced to 
Samuel, and Ave find traces of them down to the time of 
the first captivity. The first institution of the kind was 
at Ramah, where Samuel had gathered around him a 
number of men, who lived together in a group of huts 
(Naioth) formed of branches of the trees, and gave 
themselves to the study of Divine truth and the practice of 
sacred psalmody. They constituted a sort of college or 
brotherhood, over which Samuel presided, and whom he 
doubtless employed in the work of instruction. Later on, 
these institutions increased. In the reign of Ahab we 
find three comparatively near together — at Bethel (2 Kings 
ii. 3), Jericho (2 Kings ii. 5), Gilgal (2 Kings iv. 38). 
The members of them were then called " Sons of the 
prophets " — not that they were natural descendants of 
prophets, but had inherited the prophetic spirit, were 
spiritual children of the prophets. Prophets arose outside 
of these schools, but not to have belonged to one of them 
was regarded as a deficiency, and sometimes made a 
reproach (Amos vii. 12-15). Some were married and 
some single. The latter lived together and shared one 
mess (2 Kings iv. 38-14) ; the former lived in their own 
dwellings and maintained their own separate households 
(2 Kings iv. 1-7). The company in each " school " 
appears to have been very numerous, from fifty to a 
hundred or more (1 Kings xviii. 4; 2 Kings iv. 43). We 
once read of four hundred being assembled together, but 
these were probably from different schools (1 Kings xxii. 
6). We know that Elisha, who was at the head of one of 
these schools, itinerated through the country instructing 
the people, and we may infer that the men whom he 
educated did similar work, like those Levites whom 
Jehoshaphat sent through the cities of Judah ; or like the 



SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHETS. 105 

Norwegian schoolmasters, who, until the comparatively 
recent establishment of parochial schools, used to travel 
through the sparse population of Norway from one 
farmhouse to another, educating the people in their own 
homes. We may also conclude from the question addressed 
to the Shunammite woman by her husband — " Where- 
fore wilt thou go to the prophet to-day, seeing that it is 
neither new moon nor Sabbath ? " — that in connection 
with these schools of the prophets there was some kind of 
assembly on the Sabbath days and at the feasts of the New 
Moon for religious instruction or worship (2 Kings iv. 23 ; 
see also vi. 32). 

6. Service of Song. — Fletcher of Saltoun is credited 
with the saying, " Give me the making of a nation's songs 
and I care not who makes its laws." This w r as an exagger- 
ated way of stating an undoubted truth, that the national 
songs of any people have a powerful influence on the for- 
mation of their character. Now, the national songs of the 
Jewish people were the Psalms, and such songs as those of 
Moses (Exod. xv.) and Deborah (Judges v.) ; all of them 
bearing a strong religious stamp, and some of them attaining 
a very high level of spiritual thought. There were, as far 
as we know, no other lyric poems current in the nation; 
but the people, as we shall see, were pretty generally 
conversant with these. They not only formed part of the 
worship of the temple, but were mingled with their social 
life and their military exploits. Psalm cxxxvi., with its 
grand refrain, " give thanks unto the Lord, for His 
mercy endureth for ever," was sung before the army of 
Jehoshaphat when he went to battle ; on laying the 
foundations of the second temple (compare 2 Chron. vii. 
6; xx. 21 ; Ezra iii. 10, 11) ; and again by the Maccabean 
army after their great victory over Gorgias (1 Mace. iv. 
24). We learn from the Talmud that it was the custom 
for Jewish families to sing or recite the " Hal lei " (Psa. 
cxiii.-exviii.) during the paschal meal ; and sometimes 



106 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

"the great Hallel " (Psa. cxx.-cxxxvii.) were sung at the 
close — this last being probably the " hymn " sung by 
Jesus and His disciples before they went out to the Mount 
of Olives (Matt. xxvi. 30). Other Psalms, such as the 
fifteenth, the forty-eighth, and the eighty-fourth, were 
sung by the people when they journeyed up to Jerusalem 
to keep the three great annual feasts ; and it is supposed 
that the one hundred and twenty-seventh Psalm was 
composed for the sentinels who kept watch over the temple 
mount. 

We have already seen that the cultivation of psalmody 
was one of the chief occupations of " the schools of the 
prophets ; " but it was carried to its highest perfection in 
connection with the temple service, the performers being 
Levites. Of the 38,000 who composed the tribe of Levi in 
the reign of David, 4000 are said to have been appointed 
to praise Jehovah with the instruments which David made 
(1 Chron. xxiii. 5). Over this great body of singers and 
musicians presided the sons of Asaph, Heman, and 
Jeduthun, twenty-four in number. Each was the head of 
a band of twelve, who were what we should call "leaders " 
in the psalmody, having " scholars " under them. Such a 
band was attached to each of the twenty-four courses of 
priests who came up in turn twice a year to minister in 
the temple service. This would give 288 " leaders," and 
the remainder of the 4000 (about 166 for each course) 
would constitute the rank and file or " scholars " of the 
choir.* Now, these courses of priests and Levites only 
came up to serve in Jerusalem for a fortnight in each 
year. During the rest of the twelvemonths they resided 
in their own homes, and thus we see how a knowledge of 
the Psalms and of the chants to which they were sung 
would become diffused throughout the whole land, and be 

* See 1 Chron. xxv. It is probable that this elaborate arrange- 
ment, though iuitiated by David, was not fully completed and carried 
out till a later date. 



SINGING AND PROPHESYING. 107 

a powerful educative influence among the people. We 
know how largely the hymns contribute to the impressive - 
ness of onr public worship and the efficiency of our Sunday 
school work. Perhaps our scholars owe as much to the 
influence and teaching of the hymns as to the daily lesson ; 
and hence we may estimate the beneficial effect upon the 
- Jewish people produced by their familiarity with such 
Psalms as the twenty-fifth and the fifty-first, which contain, 
as it were, the gospel by anticipation ; while other Psalms, 
such as the eighty- eighth and the hundred and thirty- 
sixth, contain a complete epitome of early Jewish history, 
a grand rehearsal of the Lord's dealings with His people. 

That the psalmody was regarded as a means of in- 
struction, and made subservient to that end, is evident 
from several passages. In 1 Chron. xxv. 1-8 the choral 
service is repeatedly called "prophesying," and Heman, 
one of the leaders of the choir, is called a seer or prophet; 
and in 2 Chron. xxv. 29 we learn that the choral arrange- 
ments were made under the direction of Gad and Nathan, 
the two chief prophets in the reign of David, though not 
themselves singers. From these passages we infer that 
the same Divine influence that inspired the prophet 
inspired the minstrel, and that the merely pleasurable aim 
of musical performance was made subordinate to the 
purpose of edification. Hence we must class the " Service 
of Song" as among the most important "means of 
religious instruction." 

7. The Synagogue. — This Greek word signifies 
literally " coming together," and was applied first to the 
people who came together, and then to the building in 
which they assembled, just like the words school, college, 
church. Some such assembling of the people in connection 
with the schools of the prophets is hinted at, as we have 
seen, in the time of the kings. But the rise of the Jewish 
synagogue may more fitly be traced to the time of the 
exile, when the Jews were cut off from the temple worship, 



108 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

and whatever other religious ordinances they had enjoyed 
in their native land. In the Book of Ezekiel, the great 
prophet of that age, we read repeatedly of the people 
coming and sitting before him to hear the word of the 
Lord (Ezek. viii. 1, xiv. 1, xx. 1). " They speak one to 
another, and say, Come, I pray you, and hear what is the 
word that cometh forth from the Lord. And they come 
unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as 
My people, and they hear thy words " (xxxiii. 30, 31) ; 
and by Jewish commentators the " little sanctuary " 
spoken of in xi. 16 is supposed to refer to an actual 
building. After the return from captivity solemn meetings 
of the people became frequent, and were probably periodic 
(Ezra viii. 15 ; Neh. viii. 2 ; ix. 1 ; Zech. vii. 5) ; and 
during the interval between the Old and New Testaments 
the synagogue system became fully established. Almost 
every town and village had its synagogue, not only 
throughout the land of Palestine, but in all the cities of 
the Roman Empire where there was a large Jewish 
population. Where the Jews were not in sufficient 
numbers to erect and fill a synagogue, they frequently 
built a jproseucha, or place of prayer, — a slight structure, 
often open to the sky, in which devout Jews and proselytes 
met to worship and perhaps to read (see Acts xvi. 13). 
In the regular synagogues there was a full Divine service 
every Sabbath day. A liturgy, or written form of prayer, 
was used. There were two lessons or readings from 
Scripture ; the first was always taken from " the Law." 
The Pentateuch was divided into sections in such a way 
that, reading them continuously from Sabbath to Sabbath, 
the whole five books of Moses were gone through once in 
three years.* The second lesson was taken from the 
second division of the Jewish Canon, " The Prophets." 

* " Moses hath in every city them that preach him, being read in 
the synagogues every Sabbath day" (Acts xv. 21). 



SYNAGOGUES AND SCHOOLS, 109 

On special occasions additional lessons were taken from 
the third division of the Canon, " The Hagiographa, or 
Holy Writings." Thus, Psalms were read from time to 
time appropriate to passing events, the great feasts, or the 
season of the year ; and at the feast of Purim the Book of 
Esther was read, because the feast was instituted in 
commemoration of the great deliverance of the Jews there 
recorded. After the reading of the second lesson there 
followed a sermon, or exposition of scripture. The first 
lesson was nsually read by a functionary specially charged 
with that duty ; but the second lesson and the exposition 
might be given by any devout person who visited the 
synagogue. Thus we find that Jesus read the second lesson 
for the day (which happened to be from Isa. lx.) in the 
synagogue at Nazareth, and delivered a discourse based 
upon it (Luke iv. 16, and ff.). He frequently preached 
in the synagogue at Capernaum, and one of his discourses 
there is recorded in John vi. (see verse 59). When Paul 
and Barnabas went into the synagogue at Antioch in 
Pisidia, they listened to the reading of the two lessons. 
" And after the reading of the law and the prophets, the 
rulers of the synagogue sent unto them, saying, Ye men 
and brethren, if ye have any word of exhortation for the 
people, say on." Then follows the discourse (Acts xiii. 
16-41). Paul made it his practice, in coming to any city 
with his gospel message, to go first into the synagogue, if 
there w r as one, and (availing himself of the privilege 
accorded to any devout Jew) to stand up and deliver it 
there (see Acts xvii. 1, 2; xviii. 4, 19; xix. 8, etc.). In 
this way the scattering of the Jews, and the synagogues 
which they built in every place, facilitated the progress of 
the gospel. 

8 Schools. — Children were allowed to attend the 
synagogue at five or six years old. When a boy reached 
the age of thirteen, he was required to do so, and was 
thenceforward called a " Son of the Law." The " Sopherim," 



110 THE BIBLE: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

or leaders of the synagogue, also instructed children 
privately. For the children of the wealthy, schools were 
to be found in the chief cities at the time of Christ, where 
what we should call a liberal education was given, em- 
bracing Greek, Latin, and other subjects. Josephus tells us 
that King Herod, when a boy, went to such a school in 
Jerusalem. But the attempt to establish schools for the 
lower and middle classes appears to have been only 
partially successful. The ordinary education of the Jew 
did not go beyond a knowledge of "the Law ;" and for 
this knowledge, even in later times, he was chiefly 
dependent upon the instruction of his parents and what 
he heard in the synagogue. There were, however, attached 
to some synagogues, chambers in which the children were 
taught to read and to repeat portions of the law. In the 
courts of the temple at Jerusalem there was such a 
chamber, called "the hall of hewn stones," where some- 
what fuller instruction was given. It was probably in 
this chamber that Jesus was found by His parents on the 
occasion of His first passover : sitting on the ground before 
the rabbis (as was the manner of Jewish children when in 
school), "both hearing and asking them questions.'' To 
Jesus, the son of Gamaliel, belongs the honour of first 
establishing an " infant school " in connection with the 
temple, where the children were admitted at the age of 
six years. But this was shortly before the destruction 
of Jerusalem (66 or 67 A.D.), so that his work did not last 
long ; for Jerusalem fell in the year 70. 

The Rabbinic Schools were designed for young men 
who wished to pursue the higher study of the law. They 
entered a " House of Instruction, " kept by some learned 
rabbi in Galilee or Judea. Paul was in this way a pupil 
of the great rabbi Gamaliel. Most of the rabbinic teach- 
ing was very profitless. The rabbis neglected " the 
weightier matters of the law ; " and devoted themselves to 
allegorical interpretations of the Old Testament narratives ; 



THE RABBINIC SCHOOLS. Ill 

to fanciful expositions of the shapes of particular letters ; 
and to the formation of a most elaborate system of petty 
rules on the most trivial subjects, such as to the particular 
way in which water was to be poured on the hands in 
washing, the precise weight that might be carried on the 
Sabbath without breaking the commandment, etc., etc. It 
is this kind of teaching against which Christ bitterly 
inveighs in the twenty- third of Matthew and elsewhere. 
There was, however, one party or school among the rabbis, 
to which Gamaliel, Paul's teacher, belonged, who devoted 
themselves more to real moral and spiritual instruction, to 
the study of Messianic prophecy, etc. To this school are 
due some of the really beautiful* maxims of the Talmud, 
of which we give a few specimens : — 

" Say little and do much. Not learning, but doing, is the ground- 
work. " 

" Say not, When I have leisure I will study ; perchance thou mayest 
not have leisure." 

" There are three crowns : of the law, the priesthood, the kingship ; 
but the crown of a good name is greater than them all." 

" The reward of good works is like dates: sweet, but ripening late." 

" The best preacher is the heart ; the best teacher is time j the 
best book is the world ; the best friend is God." 

9. The Christian Church. — We shall say nothing 
about, the religious instruction given personally by our 
Blessed Lord during His life on earth, as that stands 
quite in a class by itself ; and the missionary labours of 
His apostles hardly fall within the scope of our inquiry in 
the present chapter. But we may fitly bring that inquiry 
to a close by a glance at the beginnings of that wide 
system of religious instruction which has grown up in the 
Christian Church. It is evident that during the lifetime 
of the apostles it was already customary for Christians to 
meet together on the first day of the week for breaking of 
bread and mutual exhortation (see Acts xx. 7 ; 1 Cor. xvi. 
2 ; Heb. x. 25). After the fall of Jerusalem, the observ- 
ance of the Sabbath was gradually transferred from the 



112 THE BIBLE: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

Saturday to the Sunday, and the form of worship in the 
Christian Church was modelled after the pattern of 
the synagogue, as were likewise the first buildings erected 
for Christian worship. 

To the readings from the Old Testament, were added 
first readings from the Gospels, and afterwards readings 
from the Epistles. In the earliest period of the history 
of the Churches, before any fixed order of worship was 
adopted, the instruction was given in the assembly of 
the Churches in a somewhat promiscuous manner (see 
1 Cor. xiv. 26-40) ; but from the first the apostles laboured 
to secure orderly proceedings and systematic instruction. 
When they had founded a Church, they ordained elders 
to preside over it, and other officers were afterwards added 
(see 1 Cor. xii. 28 ; Eph. iv. 11, 12 ; 1 Tim. iii. 1, 8 ; Tib. i. 
5). The precise office held by Timothy and Titus is a 
subject on which commentators are not agreed. But it 
is evident that they were in some way charged with the 
oversight of several Churches ; and the Epistles written 
to them abound with directions to secure in all the 
Churches efficient means of instruction. " Sound doctrine/' 
or, as it might be translated, "wholesome teaching, " is 
insisted on over and over again as being indispensable to 
the Churches' welfare. In the age following the apostolic, 
it was the custom to form those who had been baptized 
into " catechu menical " classes, who went through a long 
course of instruction before they were admitted to full 
membership in the Church. And thus we have the germ 
of the manifold institutions and organizations which, under 
the guidance of the Holy Spirit, grew up in the Christian 
Church for the education of her disciples in the faith ; of 
which our Sunday schools are a more recent development. 

The following extract from the first " Apology " of Justin 
Martyr, about A.D. 140, will be read with interest, and 
may fitly conclude this chapter: " On the day called 
Sunday all who live in cities or in the country gather 



SUNDAY IN THE TIMES OF JUSTIN. 113 

together into one place, and the memoirs of the apostles 
or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time 
permits ; then, when the reader has ceased, the president 
verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these 
good things. Then we all rise together and pray ; and 
when our prayer is ended, bread and wine are brought ; 
and the president, in like manner, offers prayers and 
thanksgivings according to his ability, and the people 
assent, saying, 'Amen.' And there is a distribution to 
each, and a participation of that over which thanks have 
been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent 
by the deacons. And they who are well-to-do and willing, 
give what each thinks fit ; and what is collected is deposited 
with the president, who succours the orphans and those 
who through sickness or any other cause are in want, and 
those who are in bonds, and the strangers sojourning 
amongst us, and, in a word, takes care of all who are in 
need." 

WORKS FOE FURTHER STUDY AND REFERENCE. 

Articles "Prophet,' 5 "Music," and "Synagogue," in the Cyclopaedias 
before quoted. 

Stanley's " Jewish Church," particularly vol. i. lect. 19, " On the 
History of the Prophetical Order." 



114 the bible: the sunday school text-book. 



CHAPTER VI. 

ON THE TEACHING PROCESS, AS EXEMPLIFIED IN THE BIBLE IN 
QUESTIONING, METAPHOR AND SIMILE, OBJECT ILLUSTRA- 
TION, PARABLE, AND PRACTICAL APPLICATION. 

The Bible was not designed specially to teach the " teach- 
ing process." That is an art which, like all other arts, 
must be acquired by practice, and by a diligent use of all 
the means which Providence has placed within our reach, 
in particular by a study of the best models, the methods 
pursued by the most successful teachers. Such models, 
however, are placed before us in the Bible. The prophets 
were great teachers ; the Apostle Paul was a great 
teacher ; Jesus Christ was the Great Teacher. From the 
study of their teaching, so far as it is recorded on the 
page of Scripture, we may gather many useful hints. 
The object of this chapter is simply to call attention to the 
five elements of effective teaching enumerated in the title 
as exemplified in the teaching of Holy Writ. 

1. Questioning may be employed by the teacher in 
three ways. It may be used simply to discover to the pupil 
his own ignorance. Questions may be asked as an intro- 
duction to the subject (eVen though the teacher may know 
his pupil cannot answer them), in order to remind him of 
what he does not know, and awaken the desire for know- 
ledge. Or they may be asked at the close of instruction, as 
a means of recalling and impressing on the pupil's memory 
what he has been taught. Or, again, they may be employed 



TEACHING BY QUESTION. 115 

in the course of instruction, to set the pupil thinking, to draw 
out his powers of observation and reflection, and to lead 
him, by applying the truth already in his possession, to 
reach forth to, and infer, other truths hitherto un perceived 
by him.* This last is the highest form of the art of ques- 
tioning, and the illustrations which we shall give from the 
Bible will be chiefly of this kind. If the conversations 
and discourses of the great teachers of Scripture were 
reported at full length, we should probably have instances 
of whole series of questions so framed as to lead the person 
addressed on from one point to another, bringing out by 
degrees the ultimate truth aimed at. But the Scripture 
narrative supplies us, for the most part, with only con- 
densed accounts of these discourses, in which a simple 
question is made to serve this purpose. Thus, when the 
Pharisees asked Christ whether it were lawful to pay 
tribute to Caesar or not (Matt, xxii 17) ; if He said " No," 
they were ready to accuse Him to the Roman authorities, 
as exciting the people to insubordination and revolt ; if He 
said " Yes," they would represent Him to the people as 
being willingly subservient to the heathen invader, and no 
true defender of God's heritage But Christ said, " Show 
me the tribute money," and then asked, " Whose image and 
superscription is this ? " They w T ere compelled to answer, 
" Caesar's," and thus brought to see and acknowledge that, 
since the coin of the realm bore Caesar's stamp, he was 
their lawful governor in things temporal. And the way 

# Questions may also be employed in the course of instruction 
simply to rouse nagging attention. This is, of course, quite a subordi- 
nate use of questions, but sometimes very useful. When drowsiness or 
listlessness is stealing over a class, the teacher may sometimes banish 
it by pausing in the course of his exposition or exhortation, and firing 
a few rapid shots, passing the questions on from scholar to scholar, 
till attention is thoroughly aroused. He may put just what he is 
going to say in the form of a question, and if questions of the first 
and third kind do not occur to his mind at the moment, he can always 
fall back upon the second, and question them upon what he has been 
teaching. 



116 THE BIBLE: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

was paved for Christ's further answer, " Render, therefore, 
unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the 
things that are God's." In the case of the lawyer, how- 
ever (Luke x. 25-37), we have a succession of at least two 
questions. The lawyer asks, "What good thing shall I 
do to inherit eternal life ? " Jesus rejoins with the ques- 
tion, " What is written in the law ? how readest thou ? " 
The lawyer answers, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself." Well, 
says Christ, " This do and thou shalt live." He knew 
that the lawyer had not kept the law perfectly. Even if 
he had kept the letter, he had broken the spirit of it ; but 
Jesus would not tell him so; He wished to make him find 
it out for himself. The lawyer, anxious to justify himself, 
asks, " Who is my neighbour ? " Jesus, in reply, tells the 
story of the Good Samaritan, and then puts another ques- 
tion, " Which of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour 
to him that fell among thieves ? " The lawyer answers, 
"He that showed mercy on him." He is made to feel that 
he had taken the word " neighbour " in too narrow a sense ; 
that the bitter hatred which he and his class cherished 
against the Samaritans was against the spirit of the law; 
and that, if he would really keep it, he must show mercy 
to all who were in need, of whatsoever race or creed : and 
he is made to see this by means of questions. 

Similarly, in the case of Simon (Luke vii. 36-50), Jesus 
first tells the parable of the debtor who was forgiven the 
five hundred pence, and the debtor who was forgiven the 
debt of fifty, and then asks, "Tell Me, Simon, which of 
them will love him most ? " So bringing home to his 
heart the consciousness that he loved Christ little because 
he felt little need of forgiveness. Again, in the parable of 
the wicked husbandmen (Matt. xxi. 40), the guilt of the 
Jews and the fact that they really deserved their impend- 
ing doom, is brought home to them by the question, 
" When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what 



TEACHING BY QUESTION. 117 

will he do unto those husbandmen ? " They must needs 
answer, " He will miserably destroy those wicked men, 
and let out his vineyard to others who shall render him 
the fruits in their seasons.'' The question addressed to 
the young ruler, " Why callest thou Me good ? " was 
doubtless designed to make him think. So, likewise, the 
double question to the Pharisees (Matt. xxii. 41-45), 
" What think ye of Christ ? Whose Son is He ? " " They 
say unto Him, * The Son of David.' " Good ! the answer is 
so far right ; but Jesus follows it up with another question : 
"How, then, doth David in spirit call Him Lord, saying, 
1 The Lord said unto my Lord/ etc. ? If David, then, 
called Him Lord, how is He his Son ? " Thus, by a series 
of questions, Christ leads them on to think and discover for 
themselves that the promised Messiah must be more than 
they had anticipated — more than a great prophet, or a con- 
quering prince — that He must be in a very real sense Divine. 
2. Metaphor and Simile.— A Simile, or similitude 
(Lat. similis, "like," similitude*, "likeness"), is a figure of 
speech in which a likeness is traced between the qualities 
or behaviour of two different objects; e.g. "Like as a 
father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that 
fear Him ; " " The sun is as a bridegroom coming out of 
his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race." 
A Metaphor (Gr. metaphero, " I transfer ") is a figure of 
speech in which some quality or attribute of one object 
is transferred to another object, on account of some resem- 
blance between the quality or attribute so tranf erred to 
some quality or attribute of the object to which it is trans- 
ferred. Hence a metaphor is a condensed simile — a simile 
in which the comparison is suggested or implied without 
being stated. Thus, when Milton speaks of " the golden- 
tressed sun " it is a metaphor. If he had said, " The bright 
rays of the sun are like the golden tresses of a maiden's 
head," it would have been a simile. What is required in 
metaphors and similes is that they should be sufficiently 



118 THE BIBLE: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

obvious, and that the things introduced for the sake of 
comparison should be such as are familiar to the hearer or 
reader. We sometimes meet with metaphorical language in 
the Bible which is not very clear to us, because it is based 
on some Oriental practice or circumstance which does not 
occur in our own time and country ; but they would be 
perfectly well understood by the people to whom they were 
first spoken. Some instances of this kind have been given 
in the section on " Figurative Language/' Chap III. 
Again, when the prophet encourages us to do good and 
spread the truth in every place, saying, " Blessed are ye 
that sow beside all waters, that send forth thither the feet 
of the ox and of the ass " (Isa. xxxii. 20), we need the 
information, in order to appreciate this figure, that in 
Palestine and Egypt almost the only ground suitable for 
corn-growing lay along the banks of the rivers, whence it 
could be easily supplied with water ; and that oxen and 
asses were employed in ploughing the ground Even our 
Lord's beautiful comparison of Himself to the good 
shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, while the 
hireling flees at sight of the wolves, though we understand 
it, does not come home to us with the force it would do to 
Christ's hearers, who lived in a place and time where such 
incidents were of frequent occurrence. The Sunday school 
teacher, in framing his own illustrations, should be careful 
that they are such as his scholars can readily understand, 
drawn as far as possible from the circumstances of their 
own life. Otherwise he will only obscure his teaching 
instead of making it plainer. 

Most of the metaphors and similes of Scripture are 
adapted to all times and countries, many of them being 
drawn from the phenomena of the sky, and others from the 
most necessary operations and relationships of human life. 
And there is such an abundance of them that it is difficult to 
select specimens. We may, however, call attention to the 
exceeding beauty of the simile used by Moses to set forth 



METAPHOit AND SIMILE. 119 

the gentle nature and the refreshing quickening power of the 
Divine word, when he says, " My doctrine shall drop as the 
rain ; my speech shall distil as the dew : as the small rain 
upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass " 
(Deut. xxxii. 2). On the other hand, when Jeremiah 
would describe how that same word forces conviction upon 
the hard and impenitent heart, he writes : " Is not My 
word like as a fire ? said the Lord, and like a hammer that 
breaketh the rock in pieces " (Jer. xxiii. 29). How graphic 
are these two similes which follow the one just quoted from 
the discourse of Moses, employed to set forth God's care 
of His people Israel ! ' ; He kept him as the apple of His 
eye : as an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her 
young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth 
them on her wings ; so the Lord alone did lead him." 
How pathetic is the lamentation of Hosea over the faint 
and fleeting character of any signs of amendment shown by 
his people in their later days : " Ephraim, what shall I 
do unto thee ? Judah, what shall I do unto thee ? for 
your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew 
it vanisheth away " ! (Hos. vi. 4). On the other hand, 
" the path of the just is as the shining light (i.e. the rising 
sun), which shine th more and more until the perfect day " 
(i.e. high noon) (Prov. iv. 18). Another beautiful simile, 
drawn from the heavenly bodies, which the Sunday school 
teacher may take as an encouraging motto for himself, is 
to be found in Dan. xii. 3 : " They that be wise shall shine 
as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn 
many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever." 

The Apostle Paul frequently borrows images from the 
Grecian games, with which both he and his readers were 
well acquainted. " Know ye not that they which run in 
a race run all, but one receiveth the prize ? So run, that 
ye may obtain. ... I therefore so run, not as uncertainly ; 
so fight I, not as one that beateth the air : but I keep under 
my body" (lit. smite it in the face), "and bring it into 



120 THE BIBLE: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

subjection," etc. (1 Cor. ix. 24-27). Compare Phil. iii. 13, 
14, and Heb. xii. 1, 2. We have here a mingling of simile 
and metaphor. To the class of similes should be reckoned 
the group of figures at the commencement of Psa. xviii. : 
" I will love Thee, Lord, my strength. The Lord is my 
rock, and my fortress and my deliverer : my God, my 
strength, in whom I will trust ; my buckler, and the horn 
of my salvation, and my high tower." But the expression, 
" gird up the loins," to denote moral energy and activity, 
so frequently employed in the Old and New Testament, is 
an instance of metaphor. So when Paul speaks of himself 
as " holding forth the word of life," he is evidently using 
the metaphor of a lantern which one holds forth to show 
others the way ; the metaphor having been suggested by 
the one in the preceding verse : " Among whom ye shine 
as lights in the world " (Phil. ii. 15, 16). " Tossed to and 
fro, carried about with every wind of doctrine " (Eph. iv. 
14), is a very suggestive metaphor. In the Epistle of Jude 
we have a rapid succession of images used to describe 
the hypocritical Christians, who beneath an outward pro- 
fession of religion scarcely concealed the depravity and 
corruption of their hearts. We quote from the Revised 
Version. " These are they who are hidden rocks in your 
love feasts when they feast with you, shepherds that with- 
out fear feed themselves, clouds without water carried 
along by winds, autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, 
plucked up by the roots, wild waves of the sea foaming 
out their own shame, wandering stars for whom the black- 
ness of darkness has been reserved for ever." How forcibly 
do these figures bring out the dangerous influence, the 
selfish rapacity, the utter barrenness and uselessness, the 
shameless wantonness, and the eternal doom of these 
wretched men! 

3. Object Illustration. — We have already pointed out 
(Chaps. IV. and V.) how the sacrifices and other portions 
of the Mosaic ritual were a part of God's " teaching 



OBJECT ILLUSTRATION. 121 

process " for the Jews. These outward symbols were all 
of theni objective illustrations of spiritual truths. The 
prophets also frequently made use of outward objects to 
illustrate and enforce their teaching. Thus when Ahab 
and Jehoshaphat inquired of the prophets whether they 
should go to war with Syria, Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah 
(though he was a false prophet), " made him horns of iron, 
and said, Thus saith the Lord, With these shalt thou push 
the Syrians until thou have consumed them " (1 Kings 
xxii. 11). Zechariah, when he wished to emphasize the 
fact that the covenant between him and his people was 
broken, and that the brotherhood between Israel and 
Judah was finally dissolved, made two staves, one of which 
he called " Beauty," to signify the covenant, and the other 
" Bands " (or as it is in the margin, " Binders "), to signify 
the union between the two kingdoms, and for a time led 
a flock of sheep with them. Then he cut asunder first the 
staff " Beauty," and then the staff " Bands," in the sight 
of all the people, telling them that the covenant and the 
brotherhood were broken and annulled (Zech. xi. 3-14). 
Again, when the Lord would impress upon Amos that the 
time for reckoning with his sinful countrymen had come, 
and that they were now ripe for destruction, He showed 
him a basket of ripe summer fruit as an object illustration 
(Amos viii. 1, 2). Compare with this the two baskets of 
figs shown to the prophet Jeremiah (Jer. xxiv) ; also the 
"linen girdle" (xiii. 1-11), the "potter's wheel" (xviii. 
1-10), and the "yokes" (xxvii. 2 ; xxviii. 10). 

When Ezekiel prophesied among the Jewish captives in 
Babylon, the exiled inhabitants of Israel had been in 
captivity for more than two hundred years, scattered over 
various portions of the Old Assyrian Empire, spiritually 
dead, and as a nation utterly ruined, and as it were buried 
in heathendom. It seemed impossible that they could ever 
be revived and restored. So when God would teach His 
servants that no thin or was too hard for His Word and 



122 the bible : the sunday school text-book. 

Spirit to accomplish, and that He would indeed revive and 
restore these lost sheep of the house of Israel, He led 
Ezekiel into a valley of dry bones, and bade him prophesy 
to the four winds of heaven to blow upon them ; and the 
bones came together and stood upon their feet, an exceed- 
ing great army. Then the Lord said to the prophet, " Son 
of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold 
they say, ' Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost ; we 
are cut off for our parts.' Therefore prophesy and say unto 
them, ' Behold, my people, I will open your graves . . . 
and put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I will 
place you in your own land " (Ezek. xxxvii. 1-14). Pro- 
bably the prophet saw this only in vision ; but none the 
less does it exemplify the principle of object illustrations. 

In the examples hitherto quoted, the objects are used as 
figures and symbols; but they may be used as direct 
examples for the enforcement and illustration of moral 
lessons. The ant is so used in the Book of Proverbs, as an 
example of diligence and providence : " Go to the ant, 
thou sluggard ; consider her ways, and be wise : which 
having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat 
in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest " 
(Prov. vi. 6-8). And we may remark in passing, that 
recent observation of the habits of the ant has fully con- 
firmed the accuracy of this description, which was at 
one time called in question by naturalists. In Prov. xxx. 
25-28 the conies (or rabbits), the locusts, and the spider 
are employed along w^ith the ant to illustrate kindred 
truths. 

Perhaps the most beautiful of all object illustrations 
are those employed by our Lord, when He makes the lilies 
growing round Him, and the birds flying above His head, 
teach His disciples the lesson of confidence in their heavenly 
Father's care. It is probable, too, that when He uttered 
the parable of the Sower He pointed to a man actually 
sowing his seed, a real " object " before His hearers' eyes 



OBJECT ILLUSTRATION. 123 

These passages are so well known that they need not be 
quoted. One chief excellence about them is the common- 
ness of the objects, the frequency with which they would 
present themselves afterwards; and surely the disciples, 
whenever they looked upon a lily or a raven, or saw a 
peasant going forth with his seed basket, would recall the 
words of their Master, and the precious truths contained 
in them. 

If, as is almost certain, the preparations for the pass- 
over were actually going on when Paul was writing the 
First Epistle to the Corinthians, and the Jews were choosing 
out the paschal lamb, baking their unleavened bread, and 
sweeping their houses clean, as the custom was at passover 
time, lest any crumb of leavened bread might linger in the 
corners and unhallow the feast, then we have an instance 
of object illustration in his words, " Know ye not that 
a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump ? Purge out 
therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye 
are unleavened. For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed 
for us : therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old 
leaven, neither with, the leaven of malice and wickedness ; 
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" 
(1 Cor. v. 6-8). 

4. Parable. — A parable (Greek, parabole, a putting 
side by side, a comparison) is a short story in which 
natural incidents are made suggestive of spiritual truth. 
If it extends to great length it is called an Allegory. It 
is distinguished from the Fable, herein, that the latter 
embodies rather moral than spiritual truth, and in it 
inanimate objects, such as beasts, trees, and flowers, are 
endowed with the powers of human thought and speech. 
This is not the case with the parable, at least in the more 
restricted use of the word : * the incidents are all natural. 

* In a more general sense the word " parable " is applied to any kind 
of comparison in figurative speech. See Numb, xxxiy. 3-9, Luke vi. 
39, etc. 



124 THE BIBLE: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

Hence the "parable" of Jotham (Jud. ix. 8-15), the 
earliest in the Bible, belongs rather to the class of fables. 
It is very suggestive, well worth study as an example 
of Oriental figurative speech, but can hardly be said to 
form part of a " teaching process," so need not detain 
us here. The same applies to the message which Jehoash, 
king of Israel, sent to Amaziah, king of Judah (2 Kings 
xiv. 9). 

But we must not pass over the parable of Nathan, 
which be spoke to David after his adultery with Bathsheba 
and murder of Uriah (2 Sam. xii. 1-14). There were 
many points of view from which David's double sin might 
be regarded. This parable was designed to bring out the 
utter selfishness of his conduct. " There were two men in 
one city ; the one rich, and the other poor. The rich man 
had exceeding many nocks and herds : but the poor man 
had nothing save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought 
and nourished up : and it grew up together with him, and 
with his children ; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of 
his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a 
daughter. And there came a traveller unto the rich man, 
and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own 
herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto 
him, but took the poor man's lamb, and dressed it for the 
man that was come to him." Here, as in other parables, 
the main features of the story are alone significant. Other 
parts, such as the coming of the wayfaring man, are 
introduced simply to make the story more effective, and 
must not be forced into yielding a spiritual interpretation. 
But the selfishness and greed of the rich man in robbing 
the poor man of his one pet lamb, admirably pourtrays 
David's behaviour in robbing Uriah of his one wife. 
Most certainly this parable was part of a " teaching pro- 
cess." So pathetic is the tale, that David, supposing it to 
be fact, is roused to the hottest indignation, and exclaims, 
" As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing 



TEACHING BY PARABLE. 125 

shall surely die ; " and when once he recognizes it as a 
parable, it opens his eyes (which had hitherto been strangely 
closed) to the baseness of his own conduct; and he cries, 
" I have sinned against the Lord." 

A very beautiful parable is contained in Isa. v. 1-7, 
where the prophet, under the figure of a vineyard, which 
in spite of the utmost care and culture brought forth only 
wild grapes, teaches the men of Judah how little they had 
profited by all God's training of them, and how richly they 
deserved the punishment hanging over them. Other 
instances of teaching by parable in the Old Testament are 
to be found in Ezek. xvii. 3-10; xix. 2-9; xxiv. 3-5; 
and to these we might add the parable of the wise woman 
of Tekoah (2 Sam. xiv. 5-11). 

The parables of oar Lordiorm one of the most character- 
istic features of His teaching. So frequent were they in 
His discourses that it is said, " Without a parable spake 
He not unto them." Archbishop Trench numbers them at 
thirty in his exposition. The editor of the " Student's 
Aids " reckons forty by counting in among them some 
which should perhaps rather be regarded as similes, such 
as the New Wine and Old Bottles (Luke v. 37), the House- 
hold Watching (Mark xiii. 34, 35), etc. They have been 
variously classified, on several different principles, such as 
the periods when they were spoken, the places where they 
were spoken, the Gospels in which they occur, the truths 
which they set forth, and the sources from which the 
illustrations are drawn. The last is a very simple division, 
viz. into two, the Parables drawn from Nature, and the 
Parables drawn from the Incidents of Social Life. In 
both cases the wisdom of Christ is seen in selecting objects 
and incidents with which His hearers would be familiar — 
leaven, mustard-seed, tares, a barren fig-tree— a lost 
sheep, a lost piece of money, a wedding feast, hiring 
labourers for the vineyard, and so on. The meaning of 
most of them was very apparent, a few needed special 



126 THE BIBLE : THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

explanation to His disciples. Their value in the teaching 
process cannot be over estimated. They have always been 
favourite subjects for pulpit and class instruction; they 
linger in the memory when other parts of Scripture are 
forgotten ; they have so impressed the heart and laid hold 
on the imagination that they have given a distinctive 
sense to the word " talents " in the English language, while 
"a Good Samaritan " and "a Prodigal" have become 
proverbial expressions. No eye save God's can count the 
burning tears of penitence that have dropped upon the 
page that tells of that poor wanderer's return, or how 
many hearts it has made to re-echo with the cry, " I, too, 
will arise and go to my rather." 

The discourses of the apostles, as reported in the Acts, 
do not contain any parables, possibly because they are not 
fully reported, possibly because the occasions on which 
they were spoken were not so suitable for this form of 
teaching. Nor was it likely they would occur in letters ; 
but in the fourth chapter of Galatians, Paul nearly 
approaches the parable, when he makes an allegorical 
use of the incidents recorded in Gen. xxi. 1-10. The 
Galatians had been greatly troubled by Judaizing teachers, 
who persuaded them that they ought to be circum- 
cised and keep the law of Moses as given in Sinai. 
Paul is anxious to show them that if they did so they 
would be going backward rather than forward — going 
back into the bondage of law from the freedom of the 
gospel. So he reminds them that Abraham had two 
sons — Ishmael, the son of the bondwoman Hagar, who was 
born first without any special command or promise of God, 
in a natural way ; Isaac, the son of Abraham's true wife, 
Sarah, the free woman, who was born to him in fulfilment 
of God's special promise, by Divine intervention. And 
Ishmael teased and persecuted Isaac, and was in consequence 
cast out from Abraham's home along with his mother 
Hagar. Now Paul says in effect, These Jews who are 



PARABLE AtfD PRACTICAL APPLICATION. 127 

troubling you, are like Ishmael, children of Abraham by 
mere natural descent, and under bondage to the law, 
which was imposed on them from Mount Sinai. They vex 
and persecute you as Ishmael did Isaac, for you answer to 
Isaac, being the offspring of the Christian Church, Christ's 
bride, the heavenly Jerusalem ; you are spiritual children, 
born into the family of God, not by natural descent, but 
by the new birth of the Holy Spirit through faith in Jesus 
Christ. You are free from the law of Mount Sinai ; you 
have never been in subjection to it. Why then should 
you now give place to these Judaizing teachers, and 
not rather cast them out from your midst as Abraham 
did Hagar and Ishmael ? (Gal. iv. 21-31 ; and see also 
v. 12). 

5. Practical Application. — The wise teacher will, as a 
rule, practically apply his subject to the hearts and lives 
of his hearers, appealing to their consciences, and showing 
how the subject bears upon their personal needs and 
duties. This is especially needful for children, who are 
less able than adults to make the practical application for 
themselves. Though in the instances of direct instruction 
given in Scripture the hearers and readers are for the most 
part grown-up persons, we find many significant examples 
of this personal application. Many of the parables above 
referred to are thus applied. Thus, when Nathan's touch- 
ing parable, of the rich man taking the poor man's lamb, 
has moved David to indignant condemnation of the culprit, 
he makes the startling personal application, " Thou art the 
man," and then goes on to point out in detail the iniquity 
of his conduct. A still briefer application is made by 
Christ of the parable of " the Good Samaritan," when He 
has elicited from the lawyer approval of the Samaritan's 
chivalrous generosity : " Go thou, and do likewise." Very 
beautiful is His application of the parable of the Two 
Debtors, in Luke vii., on the one hand, to the weeping 
sinner at His feet, and, on the other, still more pointedly, 



128 THE BIBLE: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

to His host Simon. For her it is encouragement, for him 
reproof. Her grateful love is evidence that her great debt, 
her many sins, have been forgiven her. His cold, dis- 
courteous treatment of the Saviour, shows that he has 
known little or nothing of Divine forgiveness : " To whom 
little is forgiven the same loveth little." The application 
of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. vii. 24-27) is peculiar 
and interesting. The whole sermon has been practical and 
personal in an eminent degree. It is almost entirely made 
up of direct injunctions and prohibitions. There would, 
therefore, have been no special force in any command, 
appeal, or entreaty. So, instead of anything of this kind, 
the practical application is itself a parable ; and it is im- 
possible to conceive of anything better calculated to clinch 
the effect of the whole discourse, and secure a practical 
result in the lives of the hearers, than the striking contrast 
between the fate of the two builders. The parable has 
often been misapplied, as though it were to illustrate the 
difference between building on Christ, and building on 
some other foundation. But that was not Christ's inten- 
tion. It was to illustrate the difference between the hearer 
who does what he hears, and the hearer who does not. 
Moreover, Christ intended it as the "practical application " 
of that particular discourse : " Whosoever heareth these 
sayings of Mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a 
wise man," etc. "And everyone that heareth these sayings 
of Mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish 
man," etc. 

The discourses recorded in the Acts of the Apostles 
have generally very pointed "practical applications." 
Thus Peter, on the day of Pentecost, after showing how 
the prophecies of Scripture were fulfilled in the events of 
that day, and in the resurrection of Christ, concludes his 
sermon, saying, "Therefore let all the house of Israel know 
assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye 



PRACTICAL APPLICATION. 129 

have crucified, both Lord and Christ. . • . llepent, there- 
fore, and be baptized every one of you ; . . . for the promise 
is unto you, and to your children," etc. " And with many 
other words did he exhort, saying, Save yourselves from 
this untoward generation " (Acts ii. 36-40) . Stephen closes 
his discourse abruptly with a sudden and terrible personal 
application of it to his judges. He had been tracing the 
history of the children of Israel, showing how first of all 
their forefathers persecuted Joseph ; next, how they resisted 
Moses ; then, how they opposed Aaron ; and he had appa- 
rently intended to show how, in the time of the kings, they 
had turned a deaf ear to the prophets, but he breaks off 
suddenly at the time of Solomon — perhaps because he saw 
his judges were paying no attention to him, or because he 
read in their countenances the determination not to be 
influenced by anything he said, — and makes this home- 
thrust, " Te stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and 
ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost : as your fore- 
fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not 
your fathers persecuted ? and they have slain them which 
showed before of the coming of the Just One : of whom ye 
have now been the betrayers and the murderers (Acts vii. 
51-53). Other instances of practical application at the 
end of discourses will be found in Acts xiii. 38-41 ; xvii. 
29-31 ; xx. 28-31 ; xxvi. 27-29. 

The Epistles supply many examples. We have already 
remarked that the Epistle to the Romans approaches, more 
nearly than any other portion of Scripture, the form of a 
systematic theological treatise. But after Paul has un- 
folded the scheme of salvation through the sacrifice of 
Jesus Christ, and shown its efficiency both for Jews and 
Gentiles, in the first eleven chapters, he begins the twelfth 
thus : " I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies 
of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, 
acceptablQ to God, which is your reasonable service," and 



130 THE BIBLE: THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEXT-BOOK. 

goes on to enforce that practical holiness which should 
follow from the hearty acceptance of God's unspeakable 
gift. The argument of the first four chapters of Galatians 
is to show that Christ has completely freed us from the 
yoke of the law, ending with the parable of Sarah and 
Hagar above quoted. Then in the fifth chapter comes the 
" practical application : " " Stand fast therefore in the 
liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not 
entangled again in the yoke of bondage. " The First 
Epistle to the Thessalonians dwells much on the second 
advent of Christ, and the possibility of its coming very 
speedily and suddenly. Then in the fifth chapter, Paul 
practically applies this truth, " Therefore let us not sleep, 
as do others ; but let us watch and be sober " (ver. 6) ; and 
the rest of the chapter is occupied with exhortations to 
such behaviour as beseems those who think their Lord may 
come at any moment. The main argument of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews is that the old covenant made through 
Moses has been superseded by the new and better 
covenant made in Christ; and the priesthood of the sons 
of Aaron has given place to the higher priesthood of Christ. 
The law was but " a shadow of good things to come." It 
has passed away, but the glorious Reality has come in its 
place, to abide for ever. Then comes the practical applica- 
tion, very beautiful, but very solemn. It is twofold : 
First, Avail yourselves of the privileges of the new 
covenant with happy confidence — "Having therefore, 
brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood 
of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath con- 
secrated ... let us draw near with a true heart in full 
assurance of faith," etc. (x. 19-23). Secondly, Bew T are of 
backsliding, for Christ is God's final provision to meet the 
sinner's need ; and if that prove of no avail to rescue you 
from the dominion of sin, there is no other sacrifice in 
store, and the punishment will be great, in proportion 



PRACTICAL APPLICATION. 131 

to the greatness of the privileges you have abused. " There 
remaineth no more sacrifice for sin," etc. (vers. 24-31). 

Again, the teaching of the eleventh chapter is very 
beautifully applied in the twelfth. The eleventh chapter 
enumerates the long list of worthies who have loyally 
trusted in God, and been upheld by Him in all their tribu- 
lations. Yet the course they ran was only a preparation 
for the Higher Way laid open in Christ, and now the 
writer conceives them as a great cloud of spectators en- 
circling the course we have to run, as the spectators 
encircled the racecourse in the old Grecian games, and so 
makes his practical application, viz. that we should run 
well: " Wherefore, seeing we are compassed about with so 
great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and 
the sin that doth so easily beset us, and let us run with 
'patience the race set before us " (Heb. xii. 1). 

The reader may discover for himself many other instances 
in the Epistles ; one more only we will note, and have re- 
served till last, because it is a " practical application " which 
Sunday school teachers themselves may take to heart, and 
which may appropriately be cited as our parting word to 
them. It is the use which Paul makes of his grand argument 
in 1 Cor. xv. Some persons at Corinth had questioned the 
reality of the resurrection of believers. Paul, in reply, 
first establishes by abundant testimony the reality of 
Christ's resurrection ; he then shows how the resurrection 
of Christ's people is bound up with that of their Lord ; 
replies to the cavils of the sceptic, based on ignorance; 
and points out how vain and futile a thing all Christian 
labour would be, if its results were to vanish at death. But 
it is not so. The souls for whom we labour are immortal 
souls. The Christian tuorher ivories for eternity. Then 
comes the glowing description of the glories of the resur- 
rection, too familiar to need quoting ; and then this 
practical application, " Therefore, my beloved brethren, be 



132 the bible: the Sunday school text-book. 

ye steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of 
the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in 
vain in the Lord." 



BOOKS FOR REFERENCE AND FURTHER STUDY. 

" The Teacher's Model, and the Model Teacher." W. H. Groser. 
Sunday School Union. 50 cents. 

" Notes on the Parables," by Archbishop Trench. Appleton. $1.25. 

"The Parables of our Lord," by Rev. William Arnot. Nelson. 
$1.75. 

" Laws from Heaven for Life on Earth. Discourses on Proverbs," 
by Rev. William Arnot. Nelson. $1.75. 



APPENDIX. 



NOTE A. See p. 2. 

ON THE EVIDENCE FOR THE AUTHENTICITY AND GENUINENESS 01 
THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES AS COMPARED WITH THAT 
FOR OTHER ANCIENT WRITINGS. 

No precise definition of the terms Authenticity and Genuineness 
has been given in the body of this work. The fact is they are 
used differently by different writers. Bishop Watson says, "A 
genuine book is that which is written by the person whose name 
it bears as the author of it. An authentic book is that which 
relates matters of fact as they really happened." According to 
this definition genuine is the opposite of spurious, and authentic 
is the opposite of fictitious or fabled. Thus we should say the 
Gospel according to John is both genuine and authentic. It 
was really written by John, and the events related in it really 
happened. The so-called c ' Gospel according to Nicodemus " is 
not genuine, but spurious. It was not written (as it pretends to 
be) by Nicodemus, but by some one who lived several centuries 
later. Neither is it authentic, for it contains many incredibly 
absurd stories about Christ. " Gulliver's Travels " is a genuine 
book, but it is not authentic history. It was really written 
by its reputed author, Dean Swift ; but the persons, places 
and events described in it are imaginary. Lilliput and Brob- 
dignag are inventions of the author's brain. Many modern 
writers follow Bishop Watson in their use of these words. But 
some employ them differently. By authentic they mean what 



134 APPENDIX. 

Watson means by genuine — i.e. that the reputed author is the 
real author : and they reserve the word genuine for another 
purpose. They use it as the opposite of adulterated or corrupt. 
Many ancient manuscripts have been intentionally falsified. 
Passages which were deemed objectionable by the copyist have 
been struck out, and other passages inserted more in accordance 
with his views. Other manuscripts have suffered grievously 
through the carelessness of the copyist. Passages have been 
inadvertently omitted, and sometimes a note written by a later 
hand on the margin has been copied into the body of the text. 
A perfectly genuine manuscript or book (in this sense) is one 
which has come down to us free from these corruptions, pre- 
cisely as it left the author's hands. 

Now, in whichever sense we use the word, we are justified 
in our statement that the evidence for the authenticity and 
genuineness of the principal books of the New Testament is 
stronger than that for the great works of classical antiquity. 

1. As to the evidence that the New Testament Scriptures are 
authentic in the sense of being reliable history, " relating matters 
of fact as they really happened." As we have seen, the various 
evangelists and apostles support and corroborate each other in 
their statements as to the origin and early days of Christianity, 
just as Livy and Tacitus do in relating the history of Pome, 
only more fully and with fewer discrepancies. For no period of 
Roman history have we the consensus of so many independent 
witnesses as we have for the events of the first fifty years of the 
Church's history. Further be it observed that the allusions in 
the New Testament history to persons (such as Augustus, Herod, 
Pilate, Felix, Drusilla, etc.) that figure in the Eoman annals 
are confirmed by classical historians. Moreover, the scanty 
notices of early Christianity in the classical writers, such as the 
oft-quoted passage in Tacitus, and Pliny's letter to the Emperor 
Trajan, agree with the statements of evangelists and apostles.* 
And then again, the writers of the New Testament lived far 
nearer to the events which they record than did the classical 
historians to most of the events related in their works. 

2. As regards authenticity in the sense of authorship. For no 

* See Kennedy's "Popular Handbook of Christian Evidences," 
Part II., chap, i. 



APPENDIX. 135 

classical works can such a chain of testimony be produced as 
that which certifies that the earlier Epistles of the New Testa- 
ment were written by Paul, and the fourth Gospel by John ; and, 
in general, that the books of the New Testament emanated from 
the apostolic circle, and were from the first received by the 
Church as apostolic works. The evidence for the seven books 
that are, by comparison, of doubtful authorship, stands at least 
on a par with that for the Greek classics, while that for the 
others is incomparably greater. The references of the classic 
historians to one another are meagre and uncertain. They 
seldom or never quote a passage verbally. But we find the 
writings of the apostles specifically quoted (frequently with the 
author's name), by a chain of writers beginning with the con- 
temporaries of the apostles themselves, and increasing in breadth 
as ecclesiastical literature became more abundant.* "In not 
less than one hundred and eighty ecclesiastical writers (whose 
works are still extant) are quotations from the New Testament 
introduced ; and so numerous are they, that from the works of 
those who flourished before the seventh century the whole text 
of the New Testament might have been recovered even if the 
originals had since perished." This statement is made on the 
authority of Dr. Angus, f But the experiment was tried by 
Dr. Bentley (even more famous as a classical scholar than a 
biblical critic) and he confirms it. This large quotation of the 
Scriptures by early writers has an important bearing on our next 
point, while the evidence for the latter indirectly confirms that 
for their authenticity. 

3. Evidence for the genuineness, i. e. integrity, of the New Testa- 
ment Scriptures as compared with that for the Greek and Latin 
classics. This depends largely, though not entirely, on the 
number and antiquity of the manuscripts. It will be understood 
that neither in the case of the classics nor the New Testament 
has any manuscript actually written by the author's own hand 
survived the ravages of time. The oldest existing manuscripts 
date from the fourth century. This being so, it is evident 
that it is very advantageous to have a number of ancient manu- 
scripts of the same work to compare together. All are but 

* See the table, p. 33. 

t See his " Bible Handbook," p. 7. 



136 APPENDIX. 

copies ; but by comparing them, and observing where they agree 
and where they differ among themselves, we may conclude with 
more or less certainty what the original was. Thus, if on com- 
paring ten manuscripts of a certain book we found that a certain 
passage or word was wanting in eight of them, and only found 
in two, we should conclude that it was no part of the original, 
but had been inserted later, especially if the eight manuscripts 
were older than the two. Or supposing that the eight had it, 
and the two had it not, we should conclude that it did belong to 
the original, and had been omitted from carelessness or some 
other cause. The comparison of manuscripts with a view to 
determine the pure original text has been elaborated into a 
complete science, with certain fixed regulative principles, by the 
labour of critics during the last century. Into these principles 
we cannot now enter, but enough has been said to show the 
advantage of having a large number of manuscripts to compare ; 
and, of course, the older the manuscript, i.e. the nearer it comes 
to the age in which the writer lived, the less likelihood there is 
of its having been corrupted. 

Now, the best editions of the classics have been compiled from 
only about a dozen or a score of manuscripts, and those mostly 
of a comparatively recent date. Of Herodotus only fifteen 
manuscripts are known to exist— the oldest being of the tenth 
century. One manuscript of Yirgil is said to be of the fourth 
century, but by far the greater number are between the tenth 
and fifteenth. Drakenborch, in preparing his celebrated edition 
of Livy, consulted seventeen manuscripts for the first ten books, 
fewer for the later ones. For the Vipont edition of Tacitus 
twenty-seven manuscripts were consulted. For Cicero's works 
about the same number prior to the issue of Orelli's edition. 
He mentions three additional ones that he had collated, and lays 
stress upon the Turin manuscript of the twelfth or thirteenth 
century as being of great value. 

Now, for the later critical editions of the New Testament 
upwards of 600 manuscripts have been consulted, most of them 
dating earlier than the thirteenth century. Full particulars of 
them are given in the apparatus criticus of Alford's Greek Testa- 
ment. Two of them belong to the fourth century, three to the 
fifth, six to the sixth ; and so on till in the tenth and eleventh 
centuries they are reckoned by the hundred, And while writing 



APPENDIX. 137 

this little work, information has just come to hand of about two 
hundred manuscripts of the whole or part of the New Testament 
discovered in the Vatican Library which have not yet been in- 
spected. The New Testament, then, has an enormous advantage 
over the classics in respect to the number and antiquity of the 
manuscripts. 

But this is not the only advantage. There are the versions or 
translations ; the Old Latin and the Old Syriac, made in the 
second century ; the Sahidic Egyptian Version, in the third ; the 
Coptic, the ^Ethiopic, and the Gothic, in the fourth ; the Armenian 
and others, in the hfth. Now, though the actual parchment on 
which these translations are written is in no case older than the 
fourth or fifth centuries ; yet it is evident they not only supply 
valuable evidence of the extreme antiquity and authority of the 
original Scriptures, but also give important aid in determining 
what is the genuine text : e.g. if a certain passage is found in the 
Old Syriac, it shows it must have been in the copy from which the 
translation was made ; i.e. that it is at least as old as the second 
century. But to the strong testimony of this array of early 
versions there is no parallel in the case of classics. We might 
further note that the veneration with which the books of the 
New Testament were regarded by the copyists would tend to 
make them more careful than the transcribers of the classics. 

The result of these manifold advantages is just what we might 
have expected. We can determine the genuine text of the New 
Testament with much greater certainty than that of any classical 
work. In nearly all the ancient classics there are passages which 
are, as the editors say, " hopelessly corrupt;" i.e. the words 
have been so altered and confused in the copying, that it is no 
longer possible to guess what the original writing was, or to 
make any sense of the passage at all. There is not one such 
instance in the whole of the New Testament.* No doubt, the 
vast mass of manuscripts that have been examined present a 
large number of minute variations, in particular words and 
phrases ; but the art of textual criticism has now enabled us, in 
most cases, to pronounce with certainty which of the various 
readings represents the genuine original text ; and the remark - 

# The verse, John v. 4, with the latter part of 3, forms no excep- 
tion, for it is undoubtedly a congeries of later additions, and in the 
Revised Version has been removed from the text. 



138 APPENDIX. 

able circumstance is, that, with the exception of the last twelve 
verses of the Gospel according to Mark, and the first eleven 
verses of the eighth chapter of John (enclosed in brackets in the 
Revised Version), there is no passage of any length concerning 
which any doubt exists as to whether it was a part of the original 
Scripture or not. The large number of manuscripts, and the 
different versions, disclose no omissions and no additions of any 
importance. Compare with this the state of the case with regard 
to the "Letters of Ignatius. " There are fifteen letters in the 
Latin version and only twelve in the Greek. Each of these 
versions exists in two forms. Both in the Latin and the 
Greek, one set of manuscripts contains a shorter form, one a 
longer. It was long disputed which was the genuine one. But 
recently an Old Syriac version of the same work has been found ; 
and, behold, there are only three letters, and each of these is 
much shorter than either of the versions in the classical languages ! 
It is by such a contrast that we learn to value the certainty of 
genuineness afforded by the agreement of all the versions of the 
New Testament Scriptures. 



NOTE B. See p. 32. 

ON THE INFLUENCE OP THE PERSECUTION BY DIOCLETIAN IN 
FIXING THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON. 

The Emperor Diocletian began his reign a.d. 284. The Chris- 
tians had then enjoyed a long period of repose ; but Hierocles, 
the proconsul of Bithynia, instigated this emperor to issue a 
new edict of persecution (a.d. 303), which enjoined that the 
churches should be razed and the "Scriptures" consumed by 
fire. Many Christian teachers suffered martyrdom sooner than 
deliver up the sacred books. But others yielded to the influence 
of terror ; and some evaded the law by giving up, instead of the 
Canonical Scriptures, other Christian books of heretical or 
spurious authorship. Those persons who delivered up the 
writings were called " traditors" (= traitors ; lit. u those who 
deliver up or betray"), and were severely censured by their 
brethren. Their conduct led to a schism in the Church. The 



APPENDIX. 139 

majority treated the offenders somewhat leniently, and received 
them back into communion on profession of repentance, but a 
minority refused to acknowledge them, or any one whom they 
ordained. This minority, led by Donatus, an African bishop, 
formed a sect called the Donatists, which existed separate from 
the Catholic Church four hundred years. 

The controversy between the two parties subsequently branched 
out into other matters ; but the root and spring of it all was the 
yielding up of the sacred books. In the disputes that arose as 
to whether any one had really been a " traditor," it had to be 
settled whether the books he had surrendered were or were not 
the " Scriptures. " Both parties in the Church naturally com- 
bined to distinguish the sacred writings from all others. The 
stricter Christians required clear grounds for visiting the 
traditors with censure ; and the more indulgent ones would be 
anxious to draw the line somewhere, so as not to compromise 
their faith or seem indifferent. Augustine says that both 
parties admitted alike the Canonical Scriptures. These must, 
in fact, have been pretty well defined beforehand ; or else we 
should not find, as we do, in the account of the trials, such 
expressions as the " Scriptures of your law," used by the Roman 
commissioners as a sufficiently descriptive phrase of the books to 
be delivered up.. Eut this persecution, and the serious schism 
which rose out of it, emphasized the distinction between the 
Canonical writings and all others, and elevated the former to a 
higher degree of importance and sanctity. It was during this 
period that the term " Canonical Scriptures," as applied to the 
books of the New Testament, first came into use. 



NOTE C. See p« 77. 

ON SCRIPTURE CHRONOLOGY. 

The student who wishes to go fully into this difficult subject 
may refer to the elaborate article " Chronology," in Smith's 
"Bible Dictionary," to the briefer treatment of it by Dr. Angus 
in his "Bible Handbook" (pp. 209-219), or to Dr ; Green's 
compact little essay on " The Bases of Scripture Chronology," 



140 APPENDIX. 

n the "Aids to Bible Students" (pp. 110-113). But in this 
place we must be content to direct the teacher's attention to the 
following facts. 

1. Of course the dates given in the marginal or central column 
of reference Bibles are no part of the original Scripture, but 
represent the result of calculations of learned men, based on the 
comparison of the various notes of time in the Scripture narrative 
with each other, and with information obtained from other 
sources. These notes of time are very fragmentary, and some- 
times capable of more than one interpretation. Consequently 
the calculations made from them are liable to error. 

2. The dates given in Bagster's and most other Bibles are 
taken from Archbishop Ussher's system of chronology, published 
in the time of the Commonwealth, and somewhat modified by 
Bishop Lloyd. The chief rival system is that of Dr. William 
Hales, published near the commencement of the present century. 
The former follows the ages of the patriarchs and other data as 
given in the Hebrew Bible ; the latter the numbers as given in 
the Septuagint Version and Josephus. The former is shorter, 
making only 4000 years intervene between the creation of Adam 
and the birth of Christ, while the latter reckons 5407. Hales's 
system is on many grounds preferable, but probably it also is too 
short. The " Teacher's" (Variorum) Bible wisely abstains from 
attempting to fix any dates before the time of Abraham. 

3. The widest discrepancies between the conflicting systems of 
chronology are in the early part of Bible history From the 
establishment of the Jewish monarchy onwards they approximate, 
and in the dates they assign for the destruction of Jerusalem by 
the Assyrians there is only a difference of two years — Ussher 
giving 588, and Hales 586 B.C. 

The general accuracy of the Scripture Chronology for this 
period is confirmed by the " Canon of the Kings," preserved in 
the works of Ptolemy (second century A.r>.), and by the monu- 
mental inscriptions of Egypt, Persia, and Assyria. From the 
reign of Solomon onward, the student may use the dates of his 
reference Bible with the assurance that he is not mure than ten 
or a dozen years from the exact truth either way ; and from 
the downfall of Jerusalem to the close of the Old Testament 
Canon the limits of error are still smaller. 

4. The Chronology of the New Testament presents no serious 



APPENDIX. 141 

difficulties. Some of the principal personages, such as the 
Herods, Pilate, Felix, Bernice, Drusilla, etc., also figuring in 
Roman history, we get the date of the most important events 
fixed with perfect certainty, and have abundant confirmation of 
the accuracy of the Scripture record. Critics differ as to the 
precise date of a few of Paul's Epistles, and on some minor 
details, but the dates of our Lord's birth, baptism, and crucifixion, 
and the leading events of the Book of Acts, admit of no dispute. 
The reader is perhaps aware that our present mode of reckoning 
the date of an event — so many years before Christ (b.c), or so 
many years after Christ (a.d.) — was adopted in the sixth century 
from the calculations of a Roman abbot, Dionysius the Little* 
who, as is now generally agreed, had fixed the birth of Christ 
four years too late. So that, paradoxical as it may sound, we 
must say that Christ was born 4 B.C. ; and the present year 
(1883 a.d.) is really 1887 years after the birth of Christ. 



INDEX. 



Acts, contents of the book, 44 

, evidence for its authenticity, 

14 
Anthropomorphism, 91 
Anticchus, persecution under, 28 
Apocrypha, 25, 51 
Apocryphal Gospels, 19, 52 
Application, practical, 127 
Augustine quoted, 2 

Basilides, 13 

Bible, the, a book of human life, 
67 

, the, a unique book, 63 

the, divine origin of, Intro- 
ductory Letter viii.-xiii. 

history, 77 

Buddha, prodigies of, 58 

Canon of the Old Testament, 26. 

New Testament, 30 

Charteris, Dr., his table of Canon- 
icity, 33 

Christ's life sketched in the Epistles, 
15 

Christ's use of the Old Testament, 
21 

Chronology of Scripture, 77, 133 

Chronicles, Books of, 38 

Church life in the Epistles, 68, 69 

in the days of Justin, 112 

Classics, authenticity of the, com- 
pared with Scripture, 2, 133 

Clement of Alexandria, 1 3, 34 

Clement of Rome, 12, 33 

Contradictions of Scripture recon- 
cilable, 86 

Corinthian Epistles, evidence for, 7 

Councils of Carthage and Laodicea, 
32 



Deuteronomy, meaning and con- 
tents, 36 

Difficulties in Scripture, 85 

Diocletian, persecution under, 32, 
138 

Dramatic style of Scripture, 56 

Epistles of Paul, their authenticity, 
3,12 

of Paul, their contents, 45 

of Peter, 48 

, the Catholic, 47 

Exodus, meaning and contents, 36 

Feasts, the three great, 99 
Figures of Scripture, 58, 117 

Galatians, authenticity of, 10 

, contents and character, 45 

Genesis, meaning and conteuts, 35 
Gospels, authenticity of, 15 

, the four, compared, 42 

, the Apocryphal, 19, 52* 

Hagiographa, 28 
Hebrews, Epistle to the, 4? 
History, Jewish, summary of, 77 
Huxley, Professor, on the Bible, 64 

Illustration by natural objects, 121 
Impartiality of Scripture writers, 55 
Imprecatory Psalms, 90 
Internal evidence for the Old 

Testament, 20 

for the Gospels, 17 

for the Epistles, 3 

Irenseus, 13, 18 

Isaiah, characteristics of his book, 

40 



144 



INDEX. 



Jamnia, Synod of, 28 

Jeremiah, characteristics of his 

book, etc., 41, 103 
Job, Book of, 39 
John, Gospel of, 43 

, character of the Apostle, 48 

, Epistles and Apocalypse of, 

48 
Jones, Sir William, on the Bible, 64 
Josephus quoted, 29, 98 
Joshua and Judges, 37 
Justin Martyr, 18, 112 

Kings, Books of, 37 
of Israel and Judah charac- 
terized, 78 

Leathes, Dr. Stanley, quoted, 23 
Lesson-plan, 84 

Leviticus, meaning and contents, 36 
Luke, Gospel of, 43, 44 

Marcion, 13 
Mark, Gospel of, 43 
Matthew, Gospel of, 43 
Metaphors, teaching by, 117 
, difficult, explained, 59 

Object Illustrations, 121 
Old Testament Canon, 26 

quoted in the New, 21 

Onesimus, story of, 69 

Papia3, 17, 33 
Parables defined, 123 

in the Old Testament, 124 

of our Lord, 125 

Parallelism of Hebrew poetry, 61 
Parental instruction, 95 
Pauline Epistles, internal evidence 
for, 3 

, external evidence for, 12 

Pentateuch, Mosaic origin of, 22 

, place of, in the Canon, 26 

, contents of, 35 

Philemon, Epistle to, 69 
Plan for reading the Bible, 80 



Polycarp, 13 

Practical application, 127 
Preparation of lesson, 82 
Progress of Divine revelation, 70 
Prophets, the, a division of the 

Canon, 23, 27 
Prophets, the Greater, 40 

, the Minor, 42 

, the, active life of, 68 

, the, as teachers, 102 

, schools of the, 104 

Psalms, their inspiration, 40 
, difficulties in, 89 

Questioning in class, 114 

as employed in Scripture, 115 

Reading of the Scriptures in public, 

100 
Revelation, Book of, 48 
Rites and symbols instructive, 98 
Romans, Epistle of, internal evi- 
dence for the, 5 

, external evidence for the, 13 

, summary of contents, 45 

Schools of the prophets, 104 

of the synagogue and temple, 

109 

-, Rabbinic, 110 

Scott, Sir Walter's dying words, 64 

Septuagint, the, 21 

Similes in Scripture, 59, 118 

Song, service of, 105 

Style of Scripture, 50 

Synagogue, the great, 28 

, service of the, 108 

Talmud, 97, 111 

Timothy and Titus, Epistles to, 47 

Undesigned coincidences, 5 
Unique character of the Bible, 63 

Valentinus, 13 

Versions, early, of the Scriptures, 
13, 21, 137 



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